Canadian politics enters its era of Illiberals and Unconservatives
Canada has a Liberal Party and a Conservative Party. Broadly speaking, they are supposed to speak for liberalism and conservatism, respectively. Often in the past they have. Where the parties have diverged from their philosophical traditions, it has been more by omission than by commission: what they failed to do, rather than what they did.
What’s going on now is different. The policy direction the Liberals have taken since Mark Carney became leader is revealing itself to be not merely an overdue course correction from the blousy liberalism of his predecessor, but a decisive turn toward illiberalism: harsh on immigration, thuggish on criminal justice, cozy with dictatorships.
