I am not actively following Canadian politics, but recently Reddit swarms me with media/videos about Canada, with the kind of rhetoric I know from right winged people in Germany (AfD, CDU).
They are blaming Trudeau and immigration for everything that happens in Canada currently. Calling immigrants terrorists etc.
I always had to imagine in my head, that Canadians are friendly, open-minded people, but the media suggest otherwise.
So dear people, enlighten me with your opinion please!
I haven’t used Reddit in a while, but back when I did, r/canada was alt-right and I doubt it had real Canadians on it. It seemed like a Russian troll farm like r/the_donald. The actual Canadian subreddit seemed to be r/onguardforthee. The media is also mostly privately owned by wealthy conservatives so there’s a clear bias. I personally don’t read or watch anything that isn’t put out by the CBC, which has a mandate to be politically neutral.
Even Canada’s right wing party doesn’t hate immigrants, as they make up a large part of the Canadian labour market and are a source of tax revenue. The only valid criticism has been over student visas, which were essentially temporary visas given to people with lots of money. A lot of these “students” were middle aged, already had advanced degrees, and spent more time working a high paying job, or simply just living in Canada, than attending school. The conditions of a student visa were mostly “do you have $100,000 per year?” Nobody had much reason to put a cap on it, since it was a large revenue source, but once there were over 1 million active student visas it might have attributed to actual issues. The conditions are changing and there is now going to be a cap on the amount of active student visas.
The Conservatives are blaming Trudeau for everything though. That’s definitely real. Their current leader is Pierre Poilievre who spent most of his 20 year career as an “attack dog”. I don’t think he knows how to do anything else besides trash talk people. It used to get him in a lot of trouble, but now it’s gotten him party leadership and is probably going to get him the title of Prime Minister. Not because Canadians aren’t friendly, but because this is Trudeau’s 4th election and Canadians don’t like voting for the same person 4 times in a row.
The Tories have been attacking Trudeau from the outset though, I know people from when I lived in Calgary that still blame Trudeau Sr. for a lot of their problems so Trudeau got that from the outset.
Historically we have red Tories but imo the “big tent” of the CPC is just reform 2.0 and while they’re still there (I recall Michael Chong for example being one of the few people who acknowledged climate change and had a plan in his platform when he ran for leadership) it’s still definitely reform party at its core. I had hoped the PPC would peel off the more hard-line side of the party and they could stop courting them but yeah, that didn’t happen.
We’re an exporter though of the hardliners, I brought up Harper and the IDC a while ago but I kinda forgot about the og Preston Manning who Farage in the uk modeled his recent campaign after and is an admirer of. We like to point at the states for the shift in our Tories but we’re absolutely more than capable of trailblazing ourselves…
He’s also inherited irrational hatred from his father. Many 40-50 year old grew up hearing their parents bash PET like it was their full time job and religion. It became part of their fucking IDENTITY. JT could be the second coming of Jesus and the right would still gleefully desecrate his crucified corpse.
Not saying that’s the only factor but it sure made it easier to whip up the moral panic we see among some people today.
You need to get out of your bubble of you think /r/onguardforthee is more representative of the Canadian population than /r/canada, and if you think /r/canada is alt-right.
That may be an official mandate, but it definitely not followed. Prime example is when sued the CPC during the election (which eventually was tossed by a judge). How many times have they sued other political parties during elections?
Other parties dont send robocalls pretending to be other parties.
But the CPC does.
Other parties dont gut the oversight board and replace it with industry lobbyists, but the CPC does.
Other parties dont steal from the G7 security budget when its in Canada, but the CPC does.
Other parties dont sell off critical infrastructure like Coast guard facilities or harbour control facilities, but rhe CPC does.