The rise of right wing nativism and Canada as an outlier

[someone123]

Originally Posted by JHikka

The only issue is that mincome would have to be aligned with cost of living and, as everyone on this forum should know, cost of living varies wildly from city-to-city and region-to-region in Canada. It would be difficult for there to be a provincially-mandated mincome and especially difficult for a federally-mandated mincome.

Some people argue that the income shouldn't be pegged to the local cost of living. This would encourage people to live in cheaper places.

This is clearly a trade-off and there are arguments on both sides but I wonder how much the hyper concentration of wealth and opportunity in larger centres is a "natural" economic efficiency and how much of it is just a consequence of wealth and decision-making power ending up in the hands of a few for, really, pathological economic reasons. Like, you have a bunch of rich financiers (who maybe made their fortunes off of government contracts, monopolies, or whatever) who just happen to be in one city and they preferentially fund businesses in their city just because that's where they happen to be. Those businesses grow and the cycle continues. An alternate more distributed system might have been better but there was no opportunity for it to evolve.

A lot of people in big cities would actually be a lot happier moving to smaller towns and rural areas. They don't do that because the loss of economic opportunity is much larger than the cost savings.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by someone123

Some people argue that the income shouldn't be pegged to the local cost of living. This would encourage people to live in cheaper places.

What else could you peg it to, theoretically?

I get the idea of providing a certain level of income so that some may relocate to less-urban or rural areas. It's a sound idea and one that will become more valuable as the larger Canadian cities grow, and grow, and grow, but i'm unsure of how swimmingly this sort of program could be introduced by x level of government without there being some bizarre side affect. Surely costs would rise in larger urban centres if a certain segment of the population could still continue working in certain fields. You would almost certainly get into the realm of rural areas being for those who cannot work and urban areas for those who can work with little in between. It's seems so...dystopian. Like Mao agricultural revolution dystopian.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by JHikka

What else could you peg it to, theoretically?

The average cost of living in the country, quite simply. It'd be like the federal pension for people 65+ (OAS in English, right?) which does not care whether you live in Vancouver or rural New Brunswick. You then do what you want with that money...

Or alternatively, in a distant future, that income could even be just fixed arbitrarily, and the cost of everything else (as well as the value of the loonie) would be derived from it, not the other way around.

[Bcasey25raptor]

Originally Posted by Pinion

There's a lot of anti-Chinese graffiti in bathrooms etc, lots of passive aggressive resentment for sure. Most overt racists left Vancouver for Abbotsford/Okanagan/Alberta a long time ago, but housing prices affect everyone and there is a lot of financial stress.

I'm going to start this post by replying to you about your assertion that racists left Vancouver for the valley and Okanagan a while ago.

I grew up in Kelowna, I lived there 20 years, in my time there I never ONCE saw any racist sentiments, never once. Maybe it brews under the surface but it most certainly is not visible to regular people. Most people there are very apolitical and don't give a fuck about your skin colour or ethnic origin.

However Kelowna is still a conservative christian shit hole and thats a huge part of the reason I left, the city is not racist in any way, it is however homophobic, anti abortion, and hyper evangelical, at least by Canadian standards.

Brings me to point 2 of this discussion, I think you people are doing yourselves no good service by denying theres a nativist movement in Canada. The only reason we don't see it politically is because none of the mainstream parties here are willing to adopt said ideas as policy. Watch as Canada implements electoral reform and we see the rise of alt right parties. Read the comment section on any news article that involves immigration, multiculturalism, or islam and you will see that nativist extreme right ideas are not rare in Canada at all. These people however just do not have a political party that matches their values so they vote conservative as it's the closest they can get.

Even if you look at the rise of the alt right in Europe, it's still exaggerated, maybe 30% of the population in these country's matches this nativist viewpoint, thats not enough to win elections.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by rousseau

To wit:

"Sir, bad news -- looks like we're going to have to write off the $300 trillion spent on the Alpha Centauri colonization expedition. Based on the last transmissions from the spaceship, some of them got a few loose screws in their heads -- inbreeding over the generations likely did not help -- and it appears that they've ended up all killing each other. The ship has now ceased to function."

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

I feel you are going to be desperately disappointed if we don't go to crap.

Why on earth would you think that? What would be the benefit to me if that happened? Compared to what I have to lose?

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by lio45

The average cost of living in the country, quite simply. It'd be like the federal pension for people 65+ (OAS in English, right?) which does not care whether you live in Vancouver or rural New Brunswick. You then do what you want with that money...

I like that idea.

If you're one of those people who doesn't work and lives on minimum come, you have to live in a lower cost place like a rural area or one of the smaller cities... the larger, more expensive cities will be for those who are able to work and get an income on top of the government-paid minimum income. Makes sense to me.

[Pinion]

Originally Posted by Bcasey25raptor

I'm going to start this post by replying to you about your assertion that racists left Vancouver for the valley and Okanagan a while ago.

I grew up in Kelowna, I lived there 20 years, in my time there I never ONCE saw any racist sentiments, never once. Maybe it brews under the surface but it most certainly is not visible to regular people. Most people there are very apolitical and don't give a fuck about your skin colour or ethnic origin.

However Kelowna is still a conservative christian shit hole and thats a huge part of the reason I left, the city is not racist in any way, it is however homophobic, anti abortion, and hyper evangelical, at least by Canadian standards.

I meant that most racists left because Vancouver is an immigration hot spot where white people will be a minority soon, not that Vancouver has no racists. And Kelowna has plenty of racists like everywhere else.

[urbandreamer]

^Why imply you're only racist if you're white?

[Loco101]

If Canada didn't have a large francophone population I'm pretty sure there would be more right-wing nativism happening at the federal level.

I live in a city in Ontario where only about 20% of the population is mainly of British Isles origin. French-Canadian dominates here as an origin and about 10-15% of the people here are indigenous.

[Pinion]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

^Why imply you're only racist if you're white?

I wasn't implying that. Non-white racists don't tend to be nativists in Canada, ie what this thread is about.

[Migs]

Originally Posted by Pinion

I wasn't implying that. Non-white racists don't tend to be nativists in Canada, ie what this thread is about.

Are aboriginals who hate that the white man took possession of their land through treaties considered nativists? Are they racist?

[mistercorporate]

Originally Posted by Migs

Are aboriginals who hate that the white man took possession of their land through treaties considered nativists? Are they racist?

That's not racism. They're bitter about being cheated and genocided in their own ancestral homeland, not to mention residential schools, etc. Anyone would be bitter about what that community has gone through.

[mcminsen]

Originally Posted by hipster duck

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!

Another column in the Globe & Mail, this time by John Ibbitson.


In a world of closing doors, Canada is embracing inclusion
JOHN IBBITSON
OTTAWA — The Globe and Mail

"Anti-immigrant resentment helped persuade 52 per cent of Britons to vote to leave the European Union last week. The man who will represent the Republican party in this year’s U.S. presidential election spouts racist, nativist rhetoric to the cheers of millions of supporters. Far-right parties promising to keep immigrants out and jobs in are on the rise from Poland to France. Newly inked free-trade agreements in Europe and the Pacific sit unratified. Anger, intolerance, suspicion, even hatred seem to be surging everywhere.

Except here. Why not here? Why not Canada?" ...

[kwoldtimer]

The idea that this somehow flows from Quebec social policies seems bizarre to me. More logical, imho, would be to simply look at Canadian demographics.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

The idea that this somehow flows from Quebec social policies seems bizarre to me. More logical, imho, would be to simply look at Canadian demographics.

Well, not all of the people quoted said that. Only one, I think?

I'd guess what most of them are thinking is that the main impact of Quebec's presence on the Canadian psyche is probably getting used to living with a largish part of the country that's a square peg that (ever) won't fit into a round hole. And not thinking it's a big deal.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Well, not all of the people quoted said that. Only one, I think?

I'd guess what most of them are thinking is that the main impact of Quebec's presence on the Canadian psyche is probably getting used to living with a largish part of the country that's a square peg that (ever) won't fit into a round hole. And not thinking it's a big deal.

Yes, that would also be a factor. Along with attitudes toward immigrtation generally, as that article notes.

[lio45]

At first sight, it seems to be easy to find factors to explain it.

I think we're the only developed country on the planet that has land borders with countries richer than it only, so illegal immigration (inwards) is nonexistent. The other sides are protected by oceans. (Australia has no land borders, but they have poor countries within navigable distances. We don't.)

If we say we'll take 25,000 Syrians, we can make it stop at the 25,001th. Unlike Europe. And we don't need to talk about building a wall.

Plus, Anglo Canada is kind of a cultural blank slate, which helps a lot. If we started a lunar colony, it would be fairly easy to make it multicultural and working, unlike any old world country.

Put all of that together and you have a pretty unique situation overall.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I'd guess what most of them are thinking is that the main impact of Quebec's presence on the Canadian psyche is probably getting used to living with a largish part of the country that's a square peg that (ever) won't fit into a round hole. And not thinking it's a big deal.

That's the only way to explain that comment, because it seems obvious that Quebec is "dragging down" Canada's overall "inclusion level" (not that that's a bad thing), not the other way around.

[Acajack]

I often think about whether our lack of serious dérapages (slippage towards nasty stuff) is due to the inherent genius of our system, or if it's just plain dumb luck...