If Canada's other national sport is feeling superior to Americans, then 2016 is the game's golden age. Watching Donald Trump carry his sideshow to the centre stage of U.S. politics is making us all feel more than a bit smug. Because of course something like that could never, ever happen here. A Canadian Trump? Impossible.
Don't be so sure. A year and a half ago, most American pundits, not to mention the grandees of the Republican Party, felt the same. They expected Mr. Trump to be quickly and safely returned to his day job in reality television.
But the forces that powered Mr. Trump to the GOP nomination, and that still give him a shot at the presidency, are not uniquely American. His campaign is appealing to voters who believe that the people in power, including the people running the party they've traditionally supported, not only do not care about them, but don't even speak their language. They feel that political correctness has shut down their ability to express what's bugging them. They feel that their country no longer belongs to them culturally and no longer benefits them economically.
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Fair or not, these kinds of frustrations are, to some extent, common among large parts of the population in every Western democracy – though who and what they're mad at, and why, varies. Canada's economy and history are different enough from the United States that a clone of Mr. Trump couldn't get elected here: How many people are going to vote for a guy pitching a border wall to cure an illegal immigration problem that Canada doesn't have? But someone Trump-like who attaches himself to more relevant grievances, real or imagined, will have a shot.
Because of slavery, Jim Crow and desegregation, race and racial fears have long been at the heart of U.S. politics. In recent years, the country's economic changes have fallen hardest on white, blue-collar men, creating a perfect combination of real economic difficulties married to imaginary racial causes. That's why Mr. Trump's promise to keep out illegal immigrants, rip up trade agreements and thereby somehow bring back manufacturing jobs, appeals to so many. He may not have answers, but he is naming what many voters see as their problems.
Canada has a very different history. The spectre of race doesn't hang over it. And immigration is far less controversial here because it is orderly, with immigrants chosen abroad, rather than showing up unannounced. As for illegal immigration, we have very little.
That's why a Canadian Trump probably would not mine racial paranoia. But that still leaves lots of resentments and frustrations – economic and cultural – waiting to be harnessed.
Just look at what happened in the last federal election, when the Conservatives decided to double down on plans to ban the niqab at citizenship ceremonies. The gambit may not have saved Stephen Harper from electoral defeat, but the party had polling that suggested its proposal was popular. It was never about shutting down or even reducing immigration. But it was an attempt to shine a light of disapproval on one very small group of people – as a way of signalling to many other voters that, under the Tories, immigrants would adapt to Canadian culture, not the other way around.
Or consider Toronto's late mayor Rob Ford. He came into office on a campaign that was in many ways Trumpian, but without the racism. If anything, Mr. Ford transcended race. He was most popular in the horseshoe of poorer suburbs around the wealthier centre of the city, including neighbourhoods with few people of his complexion. He ran against the alleged downtown elites, the lefties and pinkos at City Hall who were supposedly wasting everyone else's money on their own private gravy train.
Mr. Ford said he could cut taxes while building "subways, subways, subways," which is kind of like promising to remain stone-cold sober while chugging Dom Pérignon. Pledging to improve public transit for his long-suffering constituents, while cutting the transit budget, did not add up. But his appeal was never about the details of his platform. He was selling empathy for shared resentments, not carefully mapped out solutions.
His connection to voters was visceral and cultural. And the medium – Mr. Ford himself – was the message. So it goes with Mr. Trump. So it will go with the next Canadian politician who figures out the formula and follows in their footsteps.