Trump populism comes to Canada as
Conservatives seek leader
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[December 30, 2016]
By Andrea Hopkins
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's answer to
Donald Trump is a pediatric surgeon and former cabinet minister who,
like the U.S. president-elect, is railing against immigration and
political elites.
Kellie Leitch, 46, has vaulted to the front of the race to lead the
opposition Conservative Party by pushing a hard-right "Canadian values"
platform that taps into discontent over the sluggish economy and
Canada's acceptance of 37,000 Syrian refugees.
Leitch is ahead of about a dozen candidates in the most recent opinion
polls on the Conservative leadership election, scheduled to be held on
May 27, 2017. The candidate chosen by party members will be their flag
bearer for the October 2019 general election, against Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau's Liberals.
"Elites pretend this isn't an issue, but Canadians want to talk about it
(immigration)," Leitch said in an interview last week from her farmhouse
in rural Ontario.
She has professed admiration for Trump's embrace of the ordinary voter,
and acknowledged similarities in their agendas.
"I am talking about screening immigrants, I am talking about building
pipelines, I am talking about making sure Canadians have jobs, so yeah,
some of the ideas and language are the same," said Leitch, an energetic
and plain-spoken former labor and women's affairs minister.
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Just as Trump did not initially have the backing of mainstream
Republicans, Leitch has alienated many in her party establishment who
fear that she will struggle to win Canada's urban, mainly immigrant,
voter base in the general election.
One of the reasons why the Conservatives had managed to hold power for
almost a decade was their successful push into immigrant communities
under former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who had convinced the party
that rising immigration made newcomers a must-win constituency. Canada
takes in about 300,000 immigrants every year.
"She may believe that swimming away from the broad center of the
Conservative electoral coalition, the one that wins elections, may make
sense. History and demographics argue otherwise," said Hugh Segal, who
has known Leitch for more than 25 years. Segal is a former senator and
chief of staff to former Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
Still, a November poll by Mainstreet/Postmedia showed Leitch led a
12-candidate Conservative race with 19 percent support, and separate
data showed she led fundraising as well. The pool of candidates running
has since swelled to 14, and more may join, including businessman and
reality TV star Kevin O'Leary, who has also drawn comparisons to Trump.
"There is absolutely room for a populist surprise in Canada," said
pollster Frank Graves of EKOS Research. "The type of forces driving
Brexit and Trump are very much at work in Canada, albeit somewhat more
muted."
ECONOMIC MALAISE
In a year marked by ultra-conservative movements in Europe and the
United States, Leitch's vault from relative obscurity to Conservative
front-runner is in part boosted by media fascination with the parallels
between her "Canadian values" and Trump's "Make America great again."
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![](../images/123016pics/news_w39.jpg)
Canada's then-Labour Minister Kellie Leitch pauses while speaking to
journalists on Parliament Hill in Ottawa February 16, 2015.
REUTERS/Chris Wattie/File Photo
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Like Trump, Leitch has been accused of being racist and targeting
Muslims with her proposal to make every immigrant go through a
face-to-face interview before letting them in. She denies those
charges, and says her screening plan is aimed at ensuring each
immigrant is a good fit for Canada.
"Even if my colleagues are concerned about the backlash of the media
or other elites, that's okay with me because I'm quite comfortable
... I don't view it as racist in any way," said Leitch, a practicing
Catholic from the traditionally conservative, oil-rich province of
Alberta.
Trudeau was elected in October 2015 and promised to accept more
Syrian refugees more quickly than the Conservatives, who had been in
power for nearly 10 years. But his timeline proved too ambitious,
and sparked public criticism that the government was too rushed to
adequately screen refugees for security concerns.
Amid dissatisfaction with the economy and other issues, Trudeau's
approval rating has fallen 10 percentage points to 55 percent in the
last three months, according to a December Angus Reid poll, though
he remained more popular than any recent prime minister.
While much can change in the next three years before the general
election, Graves, the pollster, said a Conservative victory is
possible in part because Canada's economic malaise has sparked the
same kind of working class resentment that helped propel Trump to
victory.
Canada's economy has been hurt by a two-year slump in oil prices,
weak business investment and disappointing non-energy exports. The
economy contracted in October and the manufacturing sector logged
its biggest decline in nearly three years.
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"The reason Trump got his momentum is he was the only candidate who
was prepared to talk about immigration," said Martin Collacott, a
senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, a Conservative think-tank,
and a former ambassador. "If Kellie Leitch plays it right, and
refines her message, she could probably get quite a bit of support."
(Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by Amran Abocar and Tiffany
Wu)
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