Canada’s buffer against nativism

Addressing the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Justin Trudeau is expected to preach the gospel of openness — to trade, to immigration, to each other — in the face of the swell of right-wing nationalism now coursing across the developed world: a mix of protectionism, nativism, and hell-for-nothing populism roiling politics everywhere, from Donald Trump to Brexit and beyond.

It has been widely observed that Canada, almost uniquely, has remained largely untouched by this phenomenon. Could any prime minister resist the urge to sermonize a little, as if this reflected some special virtue of Canadians or, dare I say it, their current leadership?

Does it? Goodness knows Canadians need few excuses to congratulate ourselves, not least for our modesty. But so far as we have remained immune to the temptation to put up walls against the outside world, it may have less to do with any particular Canadian — or Liberal — devotion to openness and tolerance than some happy accidents of history and geography.

We have had our own experience in the past with nationalism, only it was left nationalism — foreign investment controls, cultural protectionism, anti-Americanism — and therefore orthodoxy. We have had likewise our own populism, only it was left populism — the NDP, basically — and therefore adorable.

We have also had our revolt of the pitchfork-bearing masses. It was called the Charlottetown referendum, a rejection of elite consensus to match anything in the U.S. or Europe. But that was nearly 25 years ago, and tempers have cooled a little. We had, likewise, our own great national beard-pull over free trade in the 1988 election; that, and the subsequent embrace of the agreement by the Liberals, rather settled the matter.

But of course: we are what economists call a small open economy. A protectionist movement is easier to imagine in a gargantuan economy like the United States, where barely 10 per cent of GDP is traded. It’s more obviously suicidal where exports account for nearly a third, as here. At the same time, NAFTA does not touch upon our sovereignty to anything like the same degree as the European Union does member states.

Possibly if it did we would not be so sanguine, or so sanctimonious.

Which is true of a lot of things. If Canadians are in a less belligerent mood than our American and European cousins, it may be because we have not endured anything like the series of calamities they have. In contrast to the United States, median incomes in Canada have grown steadily for most of the past 20 years; inequality, whether measured from the top or the bottom, is nothing like as bad. Our housing market did not collapse, nor did our banking sector.

We have no experience with terrorism on anything like the scale of recent attacks in the United States or Europe, let alone 9/11. Neither has immigration presented the kinds of challenges here that it has elsewhere. We have no counterpart to the 12 million illegal immigrants that are the source of so much controversy in the U.S. And while the 25,000 Syrian refugees we have admitted in the past year far exceed the American intake, it is a tiny fraction of the numbers that have arrived on Europe’s shores and borders. (People in other countries talk admiringly of the Canadian “points” system, but 3,000 miles of ocean and a cold climate are probably the most effective selection systems.)

And yet, even with all these advantages, we have had our brushes with nativism. It has become conventional wisdom that the Harper government lost the last election over it, but if you look at the polls two things jump out: the success of the anti-niqab campaign, especially in Quebec; and that Conservative support rose in the four weeks after the Syrian refugee crisis forced its way into the campaign. It was, not coincidentally, the Conservatives who, of the three parties, took the most cautious line on the crisis.

It is probably true that they overplayed their hand in the end: Canadians do not like to have their nativism rubbed in their faces. But if the Parti Québécois made the same mistake — the ban on religious wear in the civil service was also initially popular — it should not be forgotten that the McGuinty government in Ontario owed its re-election in 2007 to a similar calculated appeal to public fears. (We do not know how Kellie Leitch’s iteration will play out, but so far the polls are with her.)

As for trade, if there have not been calls for greater protectionism in Canada, it may be because we have so much of it already: from transportation to financial services to telecommunications to agriculture to that especially aggrieved cluster of shills in the “cultural industries.” If, what is more, Canadians are less inclined to close the doors to the outside world, it may be because we are too busy doing it to each other. Not for nothing is it often said that trade is in some ways freer with other countries than with other provinces.

To be fair, Trudeau has said all the right things on trade. He has been a little slower to back those words with action: witness, for example, the foot-dragging on the Trans-Pacific Partnership. If he would really like to make a contribution to keeping the world’s borders open, let him announce one thing before the UN: that he will move to immediate ratification of the TPP. As we say in the writing business, show, don’t tell.