Synonymous with “Make America Great Again” is “America First,” which proved much more than a campaign-trail rallying cry ahead of President’s Donald Trump’s election. In Canada, there’s nary a doubt Tory leader Pierre Poilievre, who smells blood in the water, is trying to capture the same energy with his recent casual use of “Canada first.”
In fact, Poilievre made eight such references during a 20-minute news conference on Jan. 9. And while there’s merit in branding Canadians’ next visit to the polls the “carbon tax election,” Canada’s probable next prime minister is wise to remind voters just how much their quality of life has deteriorated.
“We will take back control of immigration, take back control of spending, take back control of our borders, take back control of inflation, taxes and interest rates,” Poilievre said.
“The choice will be simple: either the NDP-Liberals, who tax your food, punish your work, double your housing costs, unleash crime and chaos, and weakness on the world stage, or the common-sense Conservatives who will axe the (carbon) tax, build homes, fix the budget, stop crime, and put Canada first.”
Indeed, it’s high time for the Canada First movement. Consider Justin Trudeau’s interview with New York Times Magazine just days after he was sworn in as Canada’s 23rd prime minister in 2015:
“There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada,” the then-tyro PM said. “There are shared values — openness, respect, compassion, willingness to work hard, to be there for each other, to search for equality and justice. Those qualities are what make us the first postnational state.”
Whatever a “postnational state” is, it was neither Canada pre-2015 nor is it Canada today. Trudeau’s words were a harbinger of a corrosive agenda to upend western societies and supplant local issues with raucous foreign grievances. Canada is hardly alone; Britons were brazenly insulted recently when a radical ideologue suggested iconic Remembrance Day poppies become Poppies for Palestine.
A cogent Canada First movement is long overdue — and we enjoyed a taste in February 2022 when the Freedom Convoy, a proto-Canada First movement, proved Canadians aren’t torpid by descending upon Ottawa to peacefully protest pandemic restrictions on liberty and advocate for the country’s working people.
The convoy’s uniquely Canadian energy was so strong that it inspired the world.
However, insofar as Poilievre has elucidated his Canada First vision, it’s largely focused on inchoate, if low-hanging, economic policies like eliminating the carbon tax, a poverty-inducing globalist instrument, and minor amendments to make housing more affordable, at least putatively.
He’s also vowed to fight Trump’s looming tariff war with “fire,” but, considering the American president is an ideological counterpart, there are better approaches, such as reviving Keystone XL make more sense. Not only does Trump already consider the idea copacetic, Canadians and Americans are cultural siblings between whom unity is paramount.
Poilievre could also build better ties with the U.S. by strengthening Canada’s military, as he indicated he’d do if elected, rather than freeloading off its neighbour to the south. Despite Canada’s commitment to NATO of spending two per cent of its GDP on defence, it only spends 1.33 per cent. Although that’s good enough for 14th highest in the world, Canada can climb the ranks if Poilievre follows through.
However, there’s much more at stake than that. Canada became balkanized along ethno-cultural and -religious lines not long after it declared itself a multicultural state, but the answer to this existential threat can be found internally. Quebec, the country’s second largest province, is a society which welcomes pluralism so long as newcomers adopt the French language and Québécois values. Secularism is one of those values, and a crucial one that protects the integrity of Quebec’s egalitarian society by rejecting religious accommodation. By contrast, the Anglosphere is cowed by the ever-present spectre of frivolous racism accusations.
On Thursday, Quebec’s government tabled Bill 84, An Act respecting national integration, which is underpinned by intercultural principles that countervail the opaque multiculturalism that Ottawa has long foisted upon it. And amid a population boom, Jean-François Roberge, the Coalition Avenir Québec’s minister of immigration, francization and integration, warned that laissez-faire multiculturalism is a path toward “ghettoization.”
“We will be pretty clear: we are a nation, we have a culture, we have democratic values, men and women are equal. People coming here must accept that,” he said.
Pluralism can enrich a society, provided a harmonious cultural rubric exists and is enforced, but a multicultural state with nominal borders often results in cultural dilution, suspicion and resentment, and eventually civil strife and violence.
The majority of newcomers to Canada in the last few years aren’t permanent residents; they’re non-resident permit workers, and in light of meagre economic prospects for Canadians and the newly arrived alike, mass immigration has atomized and destabilized Canada.
The record number of annually settled permanent residents and permit workers has worsened Canada’s existing housing and rental affordability crises, while surpressing wage growth. Economic activity has become so truncated in the last couple of years that some newcomers have returned to their countries of origin, while scores more — many of whom entered the country through student VISA scams — can only find work in the gig economy and have, consequently, metastasized Canada’s underclass.
And Canadian taxpayers, who have long footed the bill for social assistance and family reunification, are once again losers.
If “Canada first” isn’t a political platitude, a Poilievre-led government must immediately reform Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC). The agency, currently led by Trudeau’s old university buddy, Marc Miller, was also in disarray under his predecessor Sean Fraser, who recently bailed on the embattled PM. Ahmed Hussen — the one-time Diversity and Inclusion minister who’s department infamously hired an antisemitic consultant for anti-racism training — once helmed the maladroit IRCC, too.
Former prime minister Stephen Harper, an economist, wisely appointed the late Jim Flaherty as his finance minister. Among Flaherty’s accomplishments during his eight-year tenure was stymieing the Big Six banks’ attempt to fix mortgage rates. Harper’s successor, on other hand, prioritizes optics over competency, resulting in a revolving door of grand poobahs like erstwhile journalist Chrystia Freeland, who’s occupied the same post as Flaherty.
It’s clear that Poilievre is playing it safe by sticking to economic talking points, probably reasoning that voters for whom cultural issues are imperative will cast ballots in his favour anyway.
But real leaders aren’t milquetoast, they’re bold. And after a decade at the mercy of Trudeau, a leader contemptuous of the electorate, Canada is reeling.
Now it’s time for Poilievre to show Canadians how bold he is by putting them first.
National Post