An excerpt from political columnist Tasha Kheiriddin’s new book, The Right Path.
Excerpted from The Right Path, by Tasha Kheiriddin
Compared to other countries this century, such as the U.K. and the United States, the modern wave of right-wing populism is late in coming to Canada. It is now, however, firmly entrenched in the People’s Party of Canada, the Alberta-based Maverick Party, the Conservative Party of Quebec, and increasingly in the CPC. As in other nations, it is the product both of circumstance, including economic, industrial, and social dislocation, and leadership, both that of left-leaning politicians like Justin Trudeau, who stoked the woke, and of right-of-centre politicians, who seized the opportunity.
As mentioned, Trudeau’s time in office was marked by an astronomical growth of government. This growth predates the pandemic, where spending soared off the charts; from 2015–2019, it stemmed from both a philosophical perspective and a political calculation. Philosophically, it owed a debt to the ideas embodied in future minister-of-everything Chrystia Freeland’s 2012 opus, Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. Freeland argued that the middle class was being “hollowed out” at the expense of the wealthy; she prescribed economic redistribution to remedy inequality. Trudeau followed Freeland’s advice and gave tax breaks to the middle class while raising taxes on the rich; he also pledged “more support to those working hard to join the middle class,” playing to New Canadians’ and working-class voters’ desire for upward mobility. This, the Liberals figured, would win the support they needed to take key ridings in suburban Toronto, mainland B.C., and suburban Quebec.
Red the full article on National Post here: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/tasha-kheiriddin-trudeaus-true-legacy-stoking-the-woke