Since June we have witnessed what is becoming a seismic shift in the political landscape.
It began with the election of Doug Ford in Ontario. Ford came to his moment almost by accident after winning the Conservative leadership despite losing the popular vote for it in the wake of the totally unexpected ouster of Patrick Brown.
Running a campaign based on obfuscation and simplistic (and generally fictional) narratives, he managed to get a majority government thanks to the deep unpopularity of Kathleen Wynne, the ineptitude of the Horwath led ONDP, who only decided with a couple months to go to pretend to be left wing, and our ludicrous excuse for an electoral system.
Having been gifted the premiership by circumstance has not prevented Ford -- with the, to date, full compliance and complicity of his caucus of "progressive" conservatives -- from unleashing the beginnings of a radically right wing agenda that has included cancelling the new sex-ed curriculum as well as the scheduled minimum wage hike, threatening to use the notwithstanding clause to get his way slashing the size of Toronto City Council during an ongoing municipal election, pulling the rug out from under those on a basic income trial project and musing about stripping workers of all the rights they had gained under the Liberal Bill 148, among other things.
He is likely just getting started.
Ford also seemed terribly reluctant to disavow neo-fascist Toronto mayoral candidate Faith Goldy after she posed in a photo with him at Ford Fest, the Ford family's annual attempt at a low rent version of Triumph of the Will.
While they came nowhere near winning power the People’s Alliance in New Brunswick broke through in the provincial election there last week to take three seats and potentially hold the balance of power.
The People's Alliance, among other things, is fixated on stripping Francophone rights and on bilingualism.
Given that neither the Liberals or Progressive Conservatives won a majority, the People's Alliance may yet end up having a major influence on government policy in this minority parliament.
Finally, of course, this week saw the triumph of the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) in a provincial election that led to a party other than the Liberals or the Parti Québécois winning for the first time since 1966. They will have a majority government based on a mere 37.4% of the total vote.
The CAQ's right populist brand of nationalism is central to its message and goals. The very first thing its leader and the premier-designate François Legault did after his victory was to promise to use the notwithstanding clause to push through a law banning the wearing of religious headgear by public employees in "positions of authority" such as police officers and teachers.
He seems very anxious to get down to the business of bigotry.
He has also pledged to lower immigration levels in Quebec from 50,000 to 40,000 a year while subjecting immigrants to a nebulous "Quebec values" test the failing of which could potentially lead to their deportation.
His comments and win brought praise from groups such as extreme right La Meute as well as from France's National Front neo-fascist leader Marine Le Pen. Legault disavowed this but it still speaks volumes.
The CAQ is looking to enact nativist polices like a larger "baby bonus" to encourage women in Quebec to have more than one child. The idea, as the Montreal Gazette put it, is that this would "stimulate the economy, reduce the number of immigrants and preserve the weight of Quebec within the Canadian federation" by "counting on women to repopulate Quebec." Its commitment to help seniors stay in their homes longer is at least in part obviously similarly motivated by a desire to appeal to a certain demographic.
All is couched in a program that includes cutting the Quebec public service by at least one percent and, interestingly, reducing the number of Montreal's city councillors.
While there is something of a silver lining in Quebec that the election saw a large upswing in support for the leftist Québec Solidaire, it is a disheartening result in Canada's second most populous province, coming on the heels as it does of the result in its most populous.
This is very alarming within the context of a continental and, indeed, global resurgence of the hard right. It remains to be seen if it will translate into unexpected support for further, overtly extremist projects such as Maxime Bernier's People's Party of Canada or Goldy's campaign in Toronto.
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