s Canadians cope with the chaos that the second Donald Trump administration rains down on them, with ever-present threats of tariffs or even annexation, the effect this will have on our political scene will be profound. It has already become clear that the next federal election, whenever it happens, is no longer going to conform to earlier expectations—it is no longer a referendum on nine years of Justin Trudeau’s leadership, as he is set to step away, and it will unlikely be on the future of the carbon levy, as most of Trudeau’s would-be successors are vowing to step away from that policy as well (never mind that it is the best way to reduce emissions as the climate crisis intensifies). While the question of who can best protect Canada from Trump becomes the ballot question, the effects of Trump are being felt in other ways.
One of the most obvious changes that Trump has brought about has been to make the political discourse even more toxic. In his first administration, many took the cues that open racism was suddenly acceptable, and it flourished, particularly in online spaces. Far-right groups and outright neo-Nazis started making their presence known, and that has intensified in his second administration, and all of this filters across the border, where there was even a neo-Nazi demonstration in St. Albert, Alberta, in January. The attacks against trans people, couched in the language of “parental rights,” was felt in New Brunswick, Saskatchewan and Alberta as the rights of trans youth were curtailed in schools (though with the recent change in government, New Brunswick has walked back those changes).
Pierre Poilievre has also picked up these cues, and has let his own language with regard to trans rights become increasingly hostile even in the weeks since Trump’s inauguration. Having already made remarks that he considers trans women to be “dudes” in change rooms and prisons, he most recently declared that he is “only aware of two genders” when asked about Trump’s recent executive order to effectively ban trans people from public life. While on the one hand, Poilievre was playing cute with the distinction between sex and gender, to say that he’s not “aware” of trans or non-binary people is an obvious falsehood, but one that he feels increasingly emboldened to express because Trump has effectively given him permission to do so.
Permission structures are usually described as a means to help change people’s minds through use of empathy and compassion, rather than ridicule or shame, but they can also have the opposite effect of emboldening particular behaviours and beliefs because they are seen to be socially acceptable when they were not previously. It’s a means of shifting the Overton window, making radical speech or ideas acceptable in popular discourse, and, in Poilievre’s case, it means that he has not only become emboldened to question the validity of trans people, or to dog-whistle about migrants but it also means that he is likely to take more radical actions if he were to form government after the next election.
The political right has been building permission structures to undermine liberal democracy for years now, in part by looking increasingly to authoritarian regimes like Viktor Orbán’s Hungary as examples to follow when it comes to dismantling the institutions designed to safeguard rights and freedoms, particularly through LGBTQ+ scapegoating, and to make it impossible for one’s political opponents to effectively mount campaigns. Orbán terms this “illiberal democracy” with a straight face, and right-wing parties in the Western Hemisphere have been keen to sign up, with the Republican CPAC conference frequently holding events in Budapest to learn from his examples.
There was a direct line between Hungary’s anti-LGBTQ+ laws and Republicans in the U.S. implementing “don’t say gay” laws, and legislating attacks on drag queens and trans people. That then spilled into Canada, starting with New Brunswick, as former premier Blaine Higgs was in the sway of Christian Nationalists who took their own cues from the Republicans. And we cannot forget that former Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper has been actively whitewashing the regimes of Orbán and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni through use of the International Democracy Union, a social club for right-wing and far-right political parties, as he terms them “centre-right” to reframe them and their actions.
We can expect that because Trump has now pushed the limits of what a western government can do to minority communities once in power, Poilievre will feel emboldened to take similar actions. It’s not just attacks on trans people, because those are coming, whether it means that he plans to roll back existing human rights and hate crime protections in the name of “common sense” or to “protect women” in change rooms and prisons but it also means the likely further rolling back of employment equity legislation. Trump’s regime has made it policy to attack any and all policies related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and I fully expect that Poilievre will do the same for all federal departments and agencies, most especially including the Canadian Forces (for whom he has promoted those who espouse the falsehood that an inclusive military forgoes “warrior culture”). I would also expect attacks or outright defunding of federal research granting agencies, because they are steeped in “woke culture,” which could be the death knell for our already underfunded and collapsing universities. There is also a whole other question about how much Elon Musk or other tech bros will be writing Canadian digital policies, as Poilievre and the Conservatives have consistently given Musk praise, and he in turn has lent his support to Poilievre. This likely will mean that online harms legislation will be vastly different from what the current government has proposed, meaning likely no additional protections around hate speech.
It’s important to remember that this is less about any personal beliefs that Poilievre himself may or may not hold, because those are somewhat inscrutable for someone whose only driving force is how anything benefits him politically. Instead, this is about speaking to an audience in Canada that worships Trump, and who have been similarly emboldened by the permission structures he has put into place, because those are the votes Poilievre counts on instead of trying to play to the broad centre of Canadian politics. There was polling after previous elections that pointed to the fact that People’s Party voters were not disaffected Conservatives, but rather people who generally did not vote at all, and Poilievre sees their votes as more accessible to him than centrist votes, even when there was widespread disaffection with Trudeau. This may yet backfire on him—the chaos of the Trump administration may turn more Canadian voters’ attention back toward more reasonable alternatives, but we cannot discount the power of those permission structures to affect our politics in this country.
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