About this time last year the unnerving spectacle of the Leader of the Opposition conducting a crusade against carbon pricing while forest fires raged across the country prompted the suggestion that Canada needs some political realignment. As discussed here the prospect of a Poilievre-led Conservative government with no plan for reducing carbon emissions should be enough to convince the parties that care about the climate crisis to change the way they do business. 

The idea was to build on the parliamentary supply and confidence agreement between the Liberals and the NDP and extend co-operation to the riding level, temporarily giving up politics as usual to defeat as many Conservative candidates as possible. Aside from a few scattered commentaries the subject has not been much discussed over the last year, despite more climate chaos evident in wildfires, flash floods and temperatures that have been rising almost as much as Conservative support in the polls. But last week’s political developments in the U.S. should add some urgency.

Although Donald Trump’s possible return to the White House has been a nagging concern for a while, recent goings-on point towards an emergency. The attempted assassination last week, combined with the train wreck that is the Democrats’ election campaign, have moved Trump’s return to the White House from quite possible to likely inevitable. 

Aside from appealing to whatever higher power there is, there’s nothing Canadians can legally do to stop Trump. But that doesn’t mean we should spend the next few months sitting with our fingers crossed, hoping against hope. It means preparing for the worst a Trump administration will hand out, including addressing with increased urgency the need for co-operation among parties of the centre and left at the next election.  

The French set an example last month when centrist and left-wing parties worked together to deny power to the far-right National Rally (RN). Parties withdrew from tight races to avoid splitting the centre-left vote, urging supporters to get behind the candidate most likely to beat the RN candidate. Thrown together in the space of a week, the plan worked. The RN’s drive toward power was stopped, the party relegated to third place in the country’s parliament.    

iIt would be a stretch to equate the Poilievre Conservatives with the RN, an immigrant- bashing, Islamophobic movement with a history of antisemitism.  However, if their head-in-the-sand approach to the climate crisis wasn’t enough to convince the Liberals, NDP and Greens to combine against the Conservatives, the response of the Poilievre party and its allies to the assassination attempt and its aftermath should do it. 

Conservative Response

There is reason to be cautious about a center-left coalition for Canada because it risks further polarizing the electorate. Ideally, all parties should be willing to participate in a common front to protect Canada’s interests in the face of the emergency taking shape with the growing possibility of an authoritarian regime on our southern border. However, the reaction this week of the Poilievre party and its supporters to events in the U.S. suggest they’d rather join the right-wing wave than oppose it. 

After Trump survived the apparent assassination attempt, Poilievre joined a chorus of politicians of all stripes in condemning the act. But unlike others, the Conservative leader embraced retribution. He went on X to declare he was “happy the suspected (sic) shooter is dead,” leaving one to wonder how many other suspects he thinks should be gunned down. The Conservative Leader in British Columbia echoed Poilievre’s sentiments, expressing relief that “the assassin behind this heinous act is dead.”

Then there was Danielle Smith, eagerly embracing Republican talking points about the need for liberals and progressives to tone down their criticisms of right-wing figures like Trump and herself, lest such criticism lead to more violence. Not long ago Smith called for Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault to be put in the “crosshairs” of right-wing American media. But that was then. Now, according to Smith, it was time for progressive politicians to tone it down even though no evidence has emerged establishing any political motive for the assassination attempt.

“The way in which conservative politicians have been characterized is outrageous and I think led to the culture that we’ve seen in the U.S. and I certainly hope that some of the progressive politicians here are careful with their language because they’ve been talking about conservative politicians in the same way and they need to dial it down,” said the Alberta Premier.

Poilievre, however, saw no need to dial down his rhetoric which blames Justin Trudeau for every ill afflicting Canadians. He told a radio interviewer on Monday he will not be self-censoring his criticisms of the Prime Minister.

The inspiration for the “dial it down” admonishments from Danielle Smith and others on the right was J.D. Vance, Trump’s running mate. Within hours of the shooting Vance issued a statement blaming Trump’s critics for the shooting. “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs”, he wrote, then added, without a shred of evidence, “That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Vance is an opportunist who once compared Trump to Hitler but now joins Trump in questioning the outcome of the 2020 election, supports a national abortion ban and would throw Ukraine under the bus. But not to worry. He’s best buddies with his former roommate at Yale Law School, Jamil Jivani, fellow anti-woke campaigner and rising Toronto-area Conservative MP.  

Time to act

It’s still possible that democrats – both big “D” and small – will get their act together and prevent a second Trump presidency. Most Canadians would be pleased at such a result. But if that doesn’t happen our country will be faced with the monumental challenge of dealing with a neighbouring country led by, as columnist Andrew Coyne puts it “a con man and psychopath who has turned (the Republican Party) into a machine for dictatorship.”

In their reaction this week Canadian Conservatives have given strong indications of their approach:  accommodate, normalize and – as with the “dial it down” talk – take advantage of the Republican momentum to silence their opponents and curry favour with elements of their own base. That kind of appeasement of Trump and the Republicans, if continued,  should make a Poilievre-led government unacceptable to the majority of Canadians. But for the majority view on this essential issue to prevail, we need to move past politics as usual.  

The supply and confidence agreement shows that the Liberals and NDP can work together in Parliament. It’s time to extend that co-operation to the riding level before the next election, while also involving the Greens and even any remaining progressive conservatives. It would be a temporary measure, to defeat as many Conservatives as possible. If successful in doing that, the parties would then co-operate in the next Parliament to get rid of the first-past-the-post system. 

As I’ve pointed out before, these are not new ideas. In 2012, when both the Liberals and the NDP were choosing new leaders, the platforms of serious candidates in both parties proposed co-operation to defeat the Harper Conservatives. Twelve years later, climate chaos, the emergence of Poilievre and the response of his party to the rise of authoritarianism on our southern border make the need for co-operation even more urgent.

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