The rise of right wing nativism and Canada as an outlier
 

In this article in the Globe, Konrad Yakabuski notes that Canada is among the few countries in the Western democratic world where there isn't a rise in a nativist, right wing demagogic movement. However, he doesn't have any theories as to why Canada is able to escape this.

I think many of us can immediately think of some obvious reasons why: we're a country of immigrants; we have a points-based immigration system rather than an asylum system; we don't share a land border with a developing country, etc.

I have a weird, unverifiable theory that Canada isn't enlightened, it's just 10 years late to every party. This applies to everything from ramming freeways through our inner cities (luckily we were able to look south and learn from this) to electing neoconservative hawks ten years after 9/11.

Still, are there other reasons that might have escaped our attention? Can Canada be free of this for long?

If there's anywhere I can think where interesting ideas might bubble up about this topic, I figured it would be here. Discuss away!

I think we have plenty of Old Stock Canadians interested in the Barbaric Cultural Practices Hotline.

Beyond that, I think there's two things going on... the United States is an adjacent example for us so we get to see what works and what doesn't before it progresses too far in our own society.

And, again, as with all things Canadian, it's a federation with no national consensus. Immigration is primarily an issue in our largest cities, which are also presumably the most open it. They also get their immigrants from different places to the most part. Someone whipping up anti-Chinese sentiment isn't going to have much success outside of Vancouver. Someone fired up about Haitians wouldn't even have anyone to yell at outside of Toronto and Montreal. And for vast swaths of the country, including mine, immigration is a non-issue as the numbers are so low. Regionalism eats up Canada's nativist sentiment. It's expended for the most part on other regions of the country, not immigrants.

Nativism occurs more frequently when there is a large economic, and in some cases, social disparity between ethnic groups. In Toronto you see it in the difference at the levels of nativism between Brampton/Mississauga and Markham/Scarborough. More nativism (very mild mind you) in Markham/Brampton with less nativism and more intermixing and harmony in Mississauga/Scarborough. All 4 regions are immigrant gateways yet some are more harmonious due to more similar socio-economic statuses among ethnic groups. The points based system helped a lot but we may begin to go backwards in terms of integration and harmony due to more looser immigration policies under the new Liberal government.

It could very well be that Canada, as is sometimes the case, is simply "late to the party" on this one.

Or we may if we are lucky (largely) escape the madness. If indeed things do worsen, I doubt we'll escape it completely.

I would argue its most of the rest of the western world who are late to the points based immigration party. Australia, Canada and to a lesser extent NZ are way ahead of the others in the maturity of their systems.

I think a reform of the voting system may open up some room for more populist/nativist elements of the conservative movement in this country.

That's why I put "late to the party" in quotation marks.

That's very true. But, at the same time, Canada's very lopsided population distribution - where the greater GTA accounts for 1/3 of the country's population; 1/3 of all of English Canada - and parliamentary system means that you only have to find a GTA boogeyman, marry it to another regional cause from somewhere else, and you can run with it.

If there was a surge of nativism in the GTA, as mistercorporate explains, then some opportunistic politician could scoop up enough GTA votes to form government.

Luckily Toronto doesn't have a nativism problem yet, even though new immigrants are increasingly finding themselves at the bottom rungs of the socio-economic ladder there and there's a danger that some immigrant groups might form into a large and permanent underclass.

It's not extreme but Australia does generally have more nativist tendencies than Canada does (except for Quebec).

Not sure about NZ.

Yeah, that's true.

At least TO's patriotism is largely based on multiculturalism. They're raised with that being part of the foundation of their civic identity.

I'm pretty sure NZ is more like Canada in this regard. We're pretty similar in that we have larger and louder neighbours that we can use as a warning sign.

Wow NZ admits a lot of immigrants. They admit about as many as Quebec and they have just over half our population. (And Quebec is a high immigration jurisdiction.)

NZ does have a serious outmigration problem. Even with those immigrants their population sometimes declines.

I have a personal fear that the proposed electoral system change by Trudeau's liberals will have a very serious backlash, especially if it is interpreted as taking power away from constituents. We will be late as we all know it. It's called Canada Standard Time. We embrace it; we dread it.

Agreed, the points based immigrant system helps alleviate some of the edge from those tendencies but it certainly is more pronounced than Canada.

They also have enough from various groups that troubles from the old country seem more pronounced than in Canada - for example, football roots between Balkan ethnic groups. May have happened in Canada, I don't know, but definitely does in Australia.

Australia is still overwhelmingly of British Isles origin, Canada has no majority.

Not overall, but most regions do. Outside of a handful of large cities and francophone Quebec, Canada definitely feels dominated by people of British Isles origin. They're a majority in most provinces, and one of the largest ethnic groups in all.

I agree that British Isles origin people are the largest minority group here and have the biggest geographic spread, but being 37% of the population makes them more politically and socially compromising than a country thats 70% or so British Isles origin like Australia.

True - but I imagine there are very few places in Canada where 37% of the population is of British Isles origin. In a few large cities, it'd be less, and everywhere else anglophones dominate, it'd be more. I live in a province, for example, where well over 90% of the population is either English or Irish.

Sometimes technically true facts are a different experience on the ground. Like... Switzerland. Anyone going there expecting a country where Germans, French, and Italians do everything together is in for a shock. Outside of a few bilingual cities, they pretty much keep to themselves. So you can read that most Swiss are of German ancestry, but that's not what you'll find in Geneva, or Lugano.

Canada is a bit like that. Someone coming here looking for a country with no dominant ethnic group and rich multiculturalism is going to be in for quite a shock if they land in St. John's, or Charlottetown, or Halifax, or Moncton, or Fredericton, or Saint John, or Quebec City, or the outlying cities in Ontario, or Brandon, or Red Deer, or Victoria, or most places in between.

Canada is just too large for national ethnic stats to mean that much. It'd be a bit like saying whatever percentage of Europeans are Czech. That's not the percentage you'll find on the ground anywhere in Europe.

Vancouver, to take one example, is an exceptionally new city where the typical resident has shallow roots. Few people can trace back more than a couple of generations within the city and a huge percentage of people are descendants of relatives they know who weren't born in Canada. 100 years ago, BC only had 1/10 of the population it does today.

This is completely different from Quebec outside of Montreal or all of Atlantic Canada. In those places if you are a history buff you might have an abstract sense of when some relatives came over in the 1600's or 1700's, or you might not really be aware of any personal ties to other countries or regions. You're unlikely to have a "backup" place to move to where you have personal ties.

I am not sure how strong a force this is but I've been in Vancouver for a few years and I still have a wait-and-see attitude about the city. I really doubt I would feel the same way if I'd been born here, lived here my whole life, and had ties going far back with nothing in particular to draw me anywhere else. It would be even less likely if I were to have poor personal economic prospects that I believed were deteriorating as a result of immigration.

I spend a considerable amount of time in places which are overwhelmingly British Isles origin, think 98% or so and not even that far from Toronto. The overwhelming impression one gets in those places is that although they have a sense of place they still have to compromise in certain areas of their lives due to the immense population influence of other areas. Thats why places like Newfoundland still have to deal with French on their cereal boxes and why some conservative prairie towns will have to deal with gay marriage rights. Were forced to compromise across this country whether we like it or not due to not having any majority ethnic group. Australia, where i also nominally reside is a different beast altogether.

Makes sense to me. Now I'm curious to spend an extended period in Australia and see what that's like.

Think rural Northern England, but friendlier and happier. Their big cities are similar to mid sized Canadian cities though feel richer and sunnier.

I think the most obvious answer is slightly complex, but if you see nativism as a reactionary movement, then Canada does not have a history of events which would normally be a precursor to it. We are also, mostly a country of diverse immigrants, and with a mostly left wing or centrist liberal political tradition, but also with, arguably, a weak national identity. The fact that our economy has done relatively well for the past few years, or even decades, and we have had balanced liberal education systems, and mostly adequate social systems means there is less fertile ground here for any nativist movement.

Furthermore, what national identity we do have (or at least a large subset of the population) is strongly tied to multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism is, in a sense, the opposite of national identity, making it much less likely that any nativism emerges. Also, racial diversity (which can cause American style racial divisiveness) is not the same as multiculturalism.

The 80% of Canadians of European ancestry (i.e. white) might be surprised to learn this. We're not likely to target the Irish (again), the future risk, if it exists relates to visible minority communities be they ethnic or religious.

I think the British Isles population is often greatly underplayed in Canada outside Quebec. What with the Canadian ethnic origin mixing things up for several census periods now, it's impossible to tell just how many people are English-Irish-Scottish in origin.

My sense is that the British group might still be a bare majority even in BC and Ontario. Though not in Saskatchewan interestingly enough. SK is the only anglo majority province where British origin people are not the largest ethnic origin group. It's been that way for quite some time. I think Germans are the largest group there.

It will also be disputed by some on here but I would suspect that British origin people are still pluralities in the Greater Vancouver and Greater Toronto areas. Probably in the 40% range. Again, with Canadian ethnic origin etc. it's really hard to know. But there is no shortage of white anglos is either of those cities, in spite of what people say. It's not like Miami or Detroit.

None of this is going to last forever I agree. Either for BC and Ontario or for Toronto or Vancouver.

Regardless, this group does not appear to have hardly any nativist tendencies at the moment in Canada.

Canada looks pretty good right now it's true but one thing I was thinking about was how great some northern European countries looked on this front when I first visited them 25 years ago. I am thinking of the Netherlands and the Nordics. They were often cited as models of harmonious diversity and the M-word (multiculturalism) was heard very often as well there.

Not saying they inevitably will for Canada but things can and do change sometimes. It can happen fast too.

It's always interesting reading about multiculturalism in Canada. From my observations it's a phenomenon of the larger cities while in much of the rest of Canada it's a foreign concept. You don't have to drive that far out of Toronto to find homogeneous white communities. When I lived in Kingston, multiculturalism was literally something you only saw on TV.

Since moving to Toronto, Kingston literally feels like an entirely different country. There really are two Canadas - a dense urban multicultural society and a rural/medium urban white society.

For much of Canada, "multiculturalism" amounts to ethnic food, folk dancing and, one hopes, a modicum of tolerance. Where the multicultural crosses over into the Canadian mainstream, it's pretty much Canadian mainstream as far as I can tell.

I think you are overstating the levels of white nationalism or solidarity. The interests of French canadians, English Canadians, Ukrainians and Italian Canadians are far less racial than you state. Attempts to create a white nationalist platform is bound to alienate a majority of Italian, Irish and French Canadians if not a majority of Anglo Canadians themselves. The white nationalist movement in this country is miniscule and declining. Most of the biggest proponents of a multiethnic society in this country are "white" themselves.

That's a fairly contemporary view of things, and not necessarily shared across the country. Even when I was a kid in the 70s, the Coles Notes version of the Canadian identity would still have been mostly English-French, plus some aboriginals that we didn't really think about much.

Not to call you out personally, but the idea that multiculturalism was always part of Canada's identity and what Canada was all about, doesn't really have any basis in fact.

Isn't Denmark facing significant backlash over its refugee policies?

As for Canada, it wasn't that long ago when Quebec's Charter of Values was a significant issue.

What are these medium urban white communities? Maybe that's an east coast thing? Surrey or Richmond, for example, would not be considered medium urban white communities.

BC doesnt have too many medium sized centers outside Greater Vancouver. I believe he is referring to medium sized urban centers outside the immediate commuter suburbs of major cities. Victoria would be considered medium urban, as would Sherbrooke, London, Oshawa, Halifax, Kitchener, Quebec City, Regina, etc.

Denmark is another good example of a country thats is behind Canada and Australia when it comes to having a more modern effective immigration policy. Despite the various real flaws in our immigration strategy, it is far more effective and a couple decades ahead of Western Europe.

I think you're partly right in the sense that the risk is low (though one never knows).

But there is an ''us'' of white people in Canada that is comprised of people with names like Smith, Wilson, Mackenzie, Yaremchuk, Van Dyke, Schneider, Gagnon, Nilsson, Antonelli, etc. They're not radicalized or even mobilized in that collective identity, but it still exists. They're also open to people with different colour skin or facial features with names like Srivastava, Wong or Nkrumah who want to join their ''us".

There is also a parallel us with people who have names like Tremblay, Pelletier, Dupont, Lapointe, Mercier, Ross, Harvey, Smith, Flynn, Calliari, Lopez, Pacheco, etc. They are somewhat more mobilized as an "us" than the group above but they are also open to people with different colour skin or facial features with names like Ndiaye, Haddad or Nguyen who want to join their "us".

These groups are not significantly different from the ''non-hispanic white anglo" group in the US.

I think many bien pensant Canadians would be shocked at how easily and naturally we would break into us vs. them groups if the type of tensions other countries are seeing were to surface here.

I never claimed it always a part of our identity. It's very much a post-Trudeau thing, I think.

You're right, and that's why I said it wasn't about you. But you hear people talk about it sometimes as if it was foundational or something.

Canadian Exceptionalism. Even our right-wing populists have accepted multiculturalism.

The most fertile place for a Trump/UKIP-type politics is Quebec.

The probability of Canada turning into a white nationalists paradise with oppression of "racial" minorities is probably as high as the probability of our 1.5 million Chinese minority Canadians getting brainwashed by an ISIS-style Chinese nationalist organization that causes them to engage in a violent insurrection involving bombings, mass killings and assassinations. Basically pretty slim. Canada has gone past that stage and only a highly regressive immigration policy could even begin to take us back to that backwards phase. Another reason why the white US population is also ideologically different when it comes to racial matters, outside the Midwest which has a very different racial experience and lower levels of socio economic racial stratification. Much of white America exists in a milieu where Asians (Chinese, Indian and Jewish) are significantly wealthier and better educated than whites on average while Mexicans and blacks are significantly less educated and prosperous. Such stratification causes real class differentiation and intolerance. Ive never seen the amount of interracial couples of every single conceivable ethnic combination that i have witnessed walking through a mall in Square One Mississauga on any given day, anywhere in the world, and i make it a point to visit malls in different cities i visit to see locals in their natural habitat. Much of this has to do with the similar socio economic status of the groups in this suburb (middle class).

The idea that one's country possesses the characteristic exceptionalism is not particularly... exceptional.

I do hope you're right.

Canada is quite balkanized politically, and has been for decades. National parties have trouble cobbling together coherent support across the country, let alone those of the far-wrong xenophobic sort.

I think we have had our share of nationalist movements in the past, they have been regional, fairly disruptive and simply have not generated the proposed outcome. I am thinking of the Quebec independence movement that has gained straight from time to time going back into the 70's. It has been very regional, been highly emotional, consumed a lot of peoples time and energy and ended with a vote where the movement had not had sufficient support.

With each passing decade we move more and more to a multi-cultural society there is less support for such movements. .

In the rest of the country there simply have not been the same sense of a local nationalistic movement.

People of my generation definitely view multiculturalism as a defining aspect of what it means to be Canadian. We've probably embraced it more wholeheartedly than any other country out there, in theory at least. I was born in the 90s. We didn't live through constitutional debates, we were raised in Jean Chretien and Stephen Harper's Canada. Hell, we don't even really have much memory of separatism.

As long ago as twenty years ago, the Reform Party was largely stigmatized as a group of racists because they wanted to reduce the levels of immigration (even though they were a fairly inclusive party themselves, and ran candidates of all faiths and backgrounds) and the federal Tories fully embraced multiculturalism under Harper. What we learned in this last election is that even when a party gives nativist elements even the faintest bone, it backfires hard. Never say never, but a Trump-like figure really doesn't seem to have a constituency in this country. People aren't as angry. There's less race-based class differential. Political education is, dare I say, more widespread here (our voter turnout has actually been increasing in the past couple elections, and the 18-35 crowd here came out in record numbers last year...it was upwards around 60% for that cohort, which would put Obama '08 to shame) and hence I think people are more willing to scrutinize talking points they hear.

Why has Canada not any right wing movement on the rise? Media control by a minority of "pseudo-intellectual" leftists. Radio-Canada which is a public media, and the most "listened to" in the country, should have a neutral view or opinion on events and it's everything but a fair and balanced view that we get from them. What we see there is a "private" use of a public service to serve a far leftist agenda. Most folks don't realize it but we don't have a real liberty of press in Canada. In France they have "LeFigaro" that can be consider right wing and "Liberation" at the other end on the left. These 2 newspapers help the french people to have a good understanding of events with 2 opposite views, that is something we don't see here in Canada and if we have a newspaper that lean to the right here as "Lejournaldemontreal" for example, the quality and intellectual level of articles is not up to what you would find in "LeFigaro" so they are easily debunkable by any so-called leftist intellectual. I can tell you right away what will be the major news on Radio-Canada for the years to come: man induced global warming, promotion of feminism and gay rights, anything that promotes minorities to fight racism.

So, you are faulting us for being a smart, responsible, non-backward, non-lunatic friendly, open democratic country, considered in the world as a desirable place to live, as opposed to what? Here you have proof in this post that there is still hope for a Trumpesque trite wing nativist movement after all. True democracy!

You have also heard of NPR, CNN, BBC and MSNBC right?

I'd easily blame anti Americanism. Canada sees itself as the anti america, the US is seen as a racist closed minded bigoted shit hole and Canadians REALLY don't want to be that.

Canada is a very culturally and politically Liberal country.

Yet, on a polarized global political/social scale, the USA is still the largest population bloc among the most progressive societies in the world. Just imagine how reactionarily liberal we would be if we bordered on China. :uhh: