Why Trumpian Populism Won’t Work in Canada

3,196 words

In late 2024, the Conservative Party of Canada appeared poised to claim a landslide electoral victory in the upcoming 2025 Canadian Federal Election. With Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s approval rating hitting rock bottom, the Liberal Party seemed dead in the water. Pierre Poilievre, the populist leader of the Conservative Party, becoming the country’s next prime minister looked like a forgone conclusion. Fast forward several months, with Trudeau having resigned, it was not the Conservatives but the Liberals, under newly appointed party leader Mark Carney, who secured the electoral victory.

The effects of mass immigration, deindustrialization, inflation, and a hostile cultural climate have left large swathes of the populations of Western countries disillusioned with the progressive liberal globalist consensus of the establishment. This has given way to a wave of right-wing populism across the Western world in the past decade. Numerous political figures have ridden this wave to successful political careers, most notably Donald Trump who has won two non-consecutive terms as President of the United States.

Canada has not been spared these societal ills. In fact, one could argue that Canada went all-in on globalism to a greater extent than any country, suffering a particularly rapid decline in terms of standard of living and social cohesion as a result. Despite this, right-wing populism has had very little success in Canada politically. This has perplexed online commentators as to how the Liberal Party of Canada has managed to remain in power despite the absolute disaster the Trudeau era brought upon our country.

The answer as to why this brand of politics, which has seen success in numerous countries in the West, has failed to sell in Canada lies within the national psyche of Canadians. It has been widely noted that so much of Canadian identity is based on simply not being American. Since our countries are so similar, Canadians often go to great lengths to distinguish ourselves from our neighbors to the south. Americans like football, Canadians like hockey. Americans drink Starbucks and Budweiser, Canadians drink Tim Hortons and Molson. Americans call winter caps “beanies”, Canadians call them “toques.”

Aside from superficial cultural markers, this desire to differentiate ourselves from the US has also manifested itself politically. In the past few decades, Canada has gained a reputation for being more politically progressive than the United States. Canada has a socialized healthcare system, stricter gun control laws, less religious influence, and legalized gay marriage and marijuana earlier. This is part of the explanation for why Trumpian populism hasn’t succeeded in Canada, but this is only the surface level expression of this inclination, the roots of which date much further back than the current era. To understand this disposition and how the right could capitalize on it, we need to look back at how Canada’s national consciousness was formed.

The divergence between what would later form Canada and the United States began in the 18th century. My friend and fellow commentator Fortissax has posited that Canada was founded on the rejection of the two major Enlightenment-era Revolutions: the American and the French. In the context of Anglo-Canada, this came about with the exodus of the Loyalists who wished to remain under the rule of the British Crown. Following the American Revolution, they fled the newly established United States to the British-ruled lands to the north. Likewise, following the French Revolution across the Atlantic, the Quebecois, who came under British rule following the Seven Years War, remained a deeply religious and conservative people. This set Quebec apart from the radical revolutionary ideals which had taken over France.

A generation later, the War of 1812 broke out between the United States and the British Empire. While annexation of Canada was not an express goal of the United States during the War of 1812, it was speculated that this could be the result of a decisive American victory. However, the Loyalists in North America fought to fend off the American Republic. Though the war ended in a stalemate, Canada remained in British hands. In the subsequent decades, movements to establish an American-style republic in Canada such as the rebellions of 1837-1838 failed.

During the 1860s, the American Civil War was in full swing while Canadian Confederation was being discussed. Canada’s Fathers of Confederation saw the civil war as a result of the flaws in the classic liberal foundations of the United States. The founding creed of the United States was “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The founding creed of the Dominion of Canada was “Peace, Order, and Good Government.” In contrast to the United States, the Dominion of Canada was established with the monarchy as the head of state and a stronger centralized federal government.

By the turn of the 20th century, Canada was a union of the Empire Loyalists of Anglo-Canada and the Quebecois of French-Canada who had remained true to the traditions of Ancien France. Both of these stood as conservative counterparts to the classically liberal republican identities the United States and France had taken on. While this may seem contradictory to Canada’s identity as a radically progressive country today, the conservatism of Canada in past eras and the progressivism of the country today is rooted in the same impulse.

Ultimately, Canadians are elitist and have an ingrained aversion of disorder. As a whole, we have a greater trust in central authority, elite institutions, and hierarchy than Americans and place greater importance on the common good than that of the individual. It’s not that Canadians view the United States as too liberal or too conservative, but too chaotic. We can see this contrast play out in the histories, politics, and cultures of our separate nations.

Canada was not founded by a great revolution and nothing approaching the calamity of the American Civil War ever took place. The last major war in Canada was 1812, which took place over two centuries ago and decades before Dominion. During the 19th century, the American frontier had a reputation for lawlessness, gaining the moniker “The Wild West.” As Canada settled its Western frontier, the Canadian North-West Mounted Police were established to maintain law and order in the sparsely populated wilderness North-West Territories.

While American politics are hyper-partisan and militant, Canadian politics are boring and unobtrusive. Canadian politics lack the era-defining, larger-than-life political figures such as JFK, Ronald Reagan, Barrack Obama, or Donald Trump which can be found in American politics. Rather than a constant state of Schmittian political trench warfare between left and right like in the US, the mainstream parties in Canada always tend to be on the same page on the fundamental issues.

This divergence is also reflected in the broader culture of these two countries. There’s the stereotype of Canadians being extremely polite. This doesn’t necessarily mean we are a more moral people, but Canadian culture tends to be less flashy and more reserved than American. For example, the culture of hockey, Canada’s favourite sport, has much less braggadocio and is more team-oriented than of America’s favourite sport, football. The perception of Canadians as being overly polite is widespread because this is one discernible difference between us and Americans, to whom we are otherwise extremely similar culturally.

How did this result in Canada’s embrace of radical progressivism in the 21st century? In the second half of the 20th century, the British Empire was now a thing of the past and the West had adopted a new consensus of universalist egalitarian globalism following WWII. These values became the ideology of prestigious institutions such as the academy, big business, the mainstream media, and international bodies like the UN. Canada embraced progressivist globalism once the old order was gone and this was established as the new elite ideology in the West.

The sharp left-right divide in American politics has pitted Blue America; the progressive liberals of the professional managerial class located in cosmopolitan cities, against Red America; the conservative and religious white working class of the American heartland. While Canadian anti-Americanism has taken on the form of left-liberal civic nationalism in this era, the impetus behind this is a desire to take the side with a greater degree of status, who Canadians trust to maintain order. Despite being ostensibly left leaning, the Canadian liberal is extremely elitist and is utterly addicted the self-righteous feeling of superiority over rednecks in Mississippi.

Although Canada has gained a reputation as a libtarded madhouse of a country, a left-wing socialist party oriented towards the lower classes has never actually won an election. Canada has been governed by the supposedly centrist Liberal Party for 56 out of the 80 years since the end of WWII. The irony of the Liberal Party of Canada is that they are the least liberal party in Canada in a classical sense. Although the party is ardently progressive and globalist, they have a relentless will to power and an unwavering belief in their right to rule.

The Liberal Party has pursued the progressive social policies of globalism with a fervour unrivaled in the Western world, vehemently pushing for mass immigration, multiculturalism, feminism, LGBT normalization, and “sustainable development.” However, they have had no qualms about trampling upon classical liberal values in doing so, implementing restrictions on speech, increasing gun control, and hampering industry with stringent regulation. In addition, they have fostered a hyper-moralistic culture of zealotry behind their ideology, silencing potential opponents through fear of ostracization and totally disregarded public opinion in pursuit of this agenda.

There’s no better example of the true nature of the Liberal Party than their response to the COVID pandemic. For more than two years, the Liberal government enacted some of the most punishingly restrictive COVID policies in the world with zero regard for the enormous costs in economic and psychological damage that entailed. This was the action plan set out by prestigious international organizations, and they followed it with fanaticism. The Liberals even went so far as to invoke the Emergencies Act, legislation designed for times of war, to crack down on the 2022 Canadian Trucker’s Protest, a movement which sprung up in opposition to their COVID policies.

This elitist tendency in the Canadian psyche naturally puts Canada at odds with Trumpian populism. The ethos of the MAGA movement is a revolt of the disillusioned working class of Middle America against the out of touch elite class, giving a middle finger to the system as a whole. As a result, Trumpism venerates low status and embraces a chaotic and philistine brand of politics. This, in addition to the classical liberal ideological priors of the MAGA base, is why Trumpism clashes with Canadian sensibilities.

Looking back at the 2025 Canadian Federal Election, how did the Liberal Party snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by simply replacing Justin Trudeau with Mark Carney? The two are almost identical ideologically, but the vibe they give off couldn’t be more different. Justin Trudeau came into office in 2015 as the Great Awokening was kicking off. Back then, his ultra-woke persona was fashionable, but after a decade of his gaffes and blunders, Trudeau’s boisterous, clumsy, and moronic demeanour became a national embarrassment. Carney, on the other hand, was governor of the Bank of Canada and then later the Bank of England. He exudes the status and prestige which Canadians desire in a leader.

The election strategy of Pierre Poilievre was to mimic the MAGA-style populism, riding off of the coattails of Donald Trump’s 2024 victory. The entire message of Poilievre’s campaign was that he was NOT Trudeau. This may have given him an early lead due to Trudeau’s abysmal approval ratings, but once Trudeau was no longer in the picture, Poilievre’s Americanized populist aesthetic fell flat. This proved an especially poor choice after Donald Trump launched a trade war against Canada and proposed turning our country into the 51st state, which made anything associated with Trumpism unpalatable to large swathes of the Canadian public.

Basing one’s political preferences primarily on vibes and aesthetics rather than concrete policies may be lamentable, but unfortunately this is a reality of human nature. Most people are NPCs and are swayed by these inclinations more than anything else. Donald Trump’s rabid cult of personality among the MAGA diehards is not a result of any particular policy he has endorsed. As an actual political leader, Trump is extremely indecisive, constantly wavering from one position to the next. His appeal is that his ostentatious, abrasive, and larger-than-life persona resonates with a certain disposition in the American psyche. The difference in Canadian temperaments is why this same brand doesn’t work in Canada.

Beyond the fact that Trumpism is simply bad political marketing for the right in Canada, the actual efficacy of this political formula is questionable. While Trump has done some positive things during his time in office, his results overall have been mediocre. The track record for his imitators in Europe such as Nigel Farage, Georgia Meloni, and Gert Wilders is not much better either. Furthermore, in the past few years, this populist clique and their following on social media have neglected tangible political goals in favour of an online political circus of slop entertainment which I have taken to referring to as “slopulism.”

The place where Trumpian populism has had the most success in Canada has been in the Province of Alberta. The populist United Conservative Party has won back-to-back provincial elections and the Conservative Party of Canada under Poilievre handedly won the most seats in the province in the 2025 federal election. Albertan conservatism has imported the worst elements of the American right such as GDP worship, Zionism, and anti-intellectualism, while failing to address the fundamental threats from the left. “Conservative” premiere Danielle Smith said she wants to double Alberta’s population by 2050, a proposition which would result in the same demographic replacement of Canadians in the province as under the policies of the Liberals.

The rise of slopulism has also given us a number of Canadian conservative influencers in the manner of Americans who have built enormous social media careers off of this type of content. The entire political consciousness of these Canadian content creators is formed vicariously through American politics. Their commentary consists of nothing more than blind worship of Donald Trump, an endless stream of demoralization porn, and sometimes a little Zionism thrown in too. These slopulists offer no positive vision for Canada, instead openly embracing the idea that our country should be annexed by the United States, in hopes that Donald Trump will swoop in and save us from ourselves. Despite living in a perpetual state of outrage at the state of our country, they are always sure to denounce genuine Canadian Nationalists proposing fundamental change as “racists” and “woke right.”

If Trumpian populism is a nonstarter in Canada, what is the solution from the right? Though the Canadian tendency towards elitism and aversion to chaos may be ingrained, those attitudes manifesting themselves in a progressive globalist form is generational. Among Canadian boomers, left-leaning views are an expression of status and allegiance to prestigious institutions. Those in older age brackets have lived the majority of their lives in an immensely prosperous, high-trust, supermajority white Canada before the actual substance of this worldview took full effect. For them, egalitarianism and universalism simply constitute a virtue signal which they will never suffer the consequences of.

Among younger generations in Canada, leftism is a masochistic suicide cult of neurotic maladjusted lunatics. For those of migrant backgrounds, it’s simply a vehicle to advance their own ethnic interests at the expense of the white majority. The fulfilment of this ideology has resulted in the rapid decline of standard of living, safety, and social cohesion in Canadian society. This has brought about the very chaos and disorder which Canadians are so averse to.

Mark Carney’s victory was largely due to winning the boomer vote. This was done by wheeling out this dated left-leaning anti-American civic nationalism, with these “Elbows Up” rallies resembling BINGO night at a retirement home. Polls out of the past election show that younger Canadians leaned more right than older Canadians. When asked which issues matter the most, younger Canadians considered cost-of-living, in particular housing costs, of the utmost importance while older Canadians considered dealing with Donald Trump the most pressing issue. Canadians’ opinions on immigration are rapidly shifting as well, with the majority now desiring a significant reduction and almost half supporting deportations.

While Trumpian populism hasn’t succeeded politically, the prospects for a more authentic right-wing are quite good. It has been often noted in the dissident right-wing space that Canadians seem overrepresented in this sphere. It’s difficult to gauge how reflective this is of the general population, but some reports out of the MSM seem to back this up. Both The Hill and CBC have reported that Canadians are overrepresented in the “alt-right” and among the most active in “online right-wing extremism.” Outside of this denunciatory framing, this means there is a strong Canadian presence on the nationalist right. And for a good reason too.

The continued devotion this left-liberal anti-American form of Canadian identity is nothing more than vanity at this point, and Canadians under the age of 50 cannot afford these luxury beliefs. There is now a widespread sense that the country is headed in the wrong direction. However, the mood in Canada is not revolutionary. Much like at the founding of our country, the mood is reactionary. There isn’t enthusiasm for a hyper-politicized culture war crusade in the style of MAGA. People are burnt out on the encroachment of political zealotry into every aspect of Canadian life. The desire is to return to a state of normality and stability, something which further commitment to egalitarian multiculturalism makes impossible. Only the nationalist right offers a realistic solution.

The fatal flaw of populism is that it is geared towards the lower 80% of Pareto’s 80/20 principle. The right in Canada needs to target the top 20% of that divide. Any political movement which hopes to succeed must appeal to those of stature, especially in a country which values status and prestige as much as Canada. A slopulist political clown show targeted at the base emotions of a 90-IQ social media audience is not going to do that. The message should be one which appeals to an elite audience of competent individuals. What would that message be?

High-status individuals don’t want the disorder which threatens their position of prominence. The promise of the right shouldn’t be a fervorous demolition of polite society. Canadians prefer stability and won’t buy into a political formula which threatens to exasperate the current state of chaos with even more chaos. Rather, the selling point should be a return to the state of societal composure and accord which Canadian sensibilities are inclined towards. In other words, the promise which will win Canadians over to the right will be the restoration of peace, order, and good government.

PS: I have found the development of a Canadian-centric scene on the nationalist right in recent years very promising. If there is one organization which I feel best represents the message advocated in this essay, it is The Dominion Society of Canada. I have become a member myself and I would encourage fellow Canadians to consider doing the same.

Endeavour writes on Substack and posts on X. Be sure to follow him!