During the summer of 2016, a pseudo-fascist movement existing online since the early 2010s and popularly known as the alt-right grew into prominence during the same year when the pro-Brexit vote supported by right wing nationalists won ascendency in the United Kingdom. The Trump presidency, also inspired by the far-right, gained power later in November 2016. Nigel Farage and Donald Trump became iconoclasts and figureheads for extremist ideologues such as Alex Jones and Richard B. Spencer. Right wing groups inspired by fascist ideology continued to grow across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States. For a moment, Canada seemed immune to this countercultural and populist shift towards the far right, but of course we never actually were, because we’ve had our own extremist right wing movements like the fringe Nationalist Party of Canada founded in 1977. But then along came Maxime Bernier and the PPC in 2018.
Since last year, Bernier has attempted to make far-right ideology appear mainstream to Canadians who’ve grown bored with the Conservative Party. The former cabinet member in the Harper era and the same politician who resigned in May 2008 because he forgot a secret document inside his girlfriend’s house decided to form a populist movement with alt-right and libertarian talking points. Bernier’s People’s Party of Canada appeared more than a year after the former Conservative lost the leadership race to Andrew Scheer in May 2017.
Politicians of all stripes can be accused of bigotry. Former CCF leader, Tommy Douglas, also the father of healthcare, wrote a sociology Master’s thesis in the 1930s supporting eugenics and segregation. And Trudeau’s blackface scandal has become an embarrassment to the values of Canadian diversity. Although Trudeau Jr. gave an earnest and heartfelt apology, I doubt former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau would have ever stooped so low as to dress in a minstrel-inspired costume for any reason whatsoever. In fact, Trudeau Sr. was the author of Canada’s multiculturalism – a philosophy feared by Maxime Bernier.
The PPC platform says “With his cult of diversity, Justin Trudeau has pushed this ideology even further into a form of extreme multiculturalism. He described Canada as the first post-national state, with no core identity.”
In one sense, Maxime Bernier is right about most Canadians possessing a distinct identity. Any Canadian who has ever travelled abroad knows we’re identifiable by our accents, polite manners and for saying sorry all the time. Yes, English, French and European-descended Canadians are marked in a sense, but we’re also the products of colonialism. The first Canadians, including the Inuit and the multitudes of Aboriginal First Nations, were a diverse group settling in Canada from shore-to-shore long before the Vikings, John Cabot and Jacque Cartier began exploring Canada with imperialistic intentions.
After the Second World War, politicians on both the left and the right started introducing positive immigration policies in Canada. This made sense, as Canada had always been a country built upon immigration starting nearly 15,000 years ago and possibly much earlier as mammoth-hunting humans migrated to North America after travelling over Beringia – a land mass bridging Siberia and Alaska. Canada’s Indigenous peoples are the truest Old Stock Canadians.
Today, immigrants from all over the world arrive in Canada from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and elsewhere. According to the 2016 census, about 22 per cent of Canadians have said they were either landed or permanent residents. The majority of these new Canadians haven’t posed a threat to the notion of Canadian identity, nor have they negatively affected the country’s societal fabric for simply being unique. Canadian immigrants work hard – often two or three jobs at a time. The majority of our immigrants try to assimilate, but they also might follow practises from the old country just as our British and European ancestors did after arriving in Canada years ago. Most of our newest immigrants are striving to maintain a contributable status in Canada. Far from being drains upon civilization, Canada’s immigrants – including the nation’s refugees – have brought capital, new businesses and creativity in different forms to a country initially settled by immigrants thousands of years earlier via a land bridge stretching from Siberia into Alaska.
