“Sunny way, my friends, sunny ways”, a smiling Justin Trudeau said to an adoring crowd of supporters in Montreal following his dramatic election victory in October 2015. “This is what positive politics can do.” The message, as always, was one of hope: “this is Canada, and in Canada better is always possible.” 

Trudeau’s resignation marks an inflection point for the brand of liberal politics that he once so skilfully embodied. Barring a dramatic change in fortunes, Canadians appear set to elect what will be the most right-wing government in the country’s history later this year. Pierre Poilievre, a man who trades in an aggressive, deeply conservative form of populism inflected with libertarianism tendencies that would, in normal times, have served as an obstacle to his ambitions, will most likely become Prime Minister. In less than a decade, Canada has transformed from a bastion of toleration and moderate progressivism into a country that is bitterly divided, angry, and gloomy about the future. Its fate serves as a potent reminder that a liberal politics that does not deliver on its promises can cause even the most open societies to be consumed by reactionary anger against a political class that is viewed as, at best, scandal ridden and out of touch, if not mendacious and actively hostile to the interests of common people. This is a warning that Scotland, and Britain, would do well to heed.

Most of the reasons for Canada’s dramatic reversal of fortune are familiar. A cost-of-living crisis driven by post-pandemic inflation. A wildly unaffordable housing market where demand far outstrips supply. A creaking healthcare system that suffers from chronic underfunding and was stretched to the breaking point by shock of COVID-19. Bitter debates about the costs of the green transition made complicated by entrenched oil politics. A divisive media landscape. The malign influence of the far right from beyond the country’s borders. And above all, an economy that fails to deliver for too many people and a political class that appears unable or unwilling to do anything about it.

The turnaround is stunning. Trudeau’s triumph in 2015 was marked by a palpable desire for something new, appealing to widespread a desire for, as his campaign slogan put it, ‘Real Change’ after more than nine years of living under a parochial Conservative government. Trudeau’s Liberal Party received particularly strong support from my generation, young people who had the good fortune of growing up in Canada in the golden era of liberal democracy that marked the period between the end of the Cold War and the onset of the Global Financial Crisis. Struggling with high housing costs, grocery bills, and the demands of an unforgiving, ultra-competitive economy that is failing to deliver, young Canadians have now turned their back on Trudeau and his party. As United States learned with Obama, charisma and a vague message of hope and change are more suited to campaigning than to government, and too much style and too little substance makes for a politics that is hollow and, eventually, disillusioning.

If Trudeau’s government ultimately had few answers for what is to be done about diminished opportunities, deep inequality, deindustrialization, downward pressure on wages, lagging productivity, neglected public services, a shifting landscape of global power, rapid technological change, and climate breakdown, it is not alone. Such problems are deeply ingrained in societies across the rich world and require much more creative and skillful leadership, and more shrewd analysis, than anything Canadian politics—or indeed, Scottish or British politics—has recently shown capable of providing. Indeed, on the evidence, no political party appears up to the task. This, more than anything else, is what should concern Canadians.

Liberal democracy is a collective project, one that falls apart when it leaves too many people behind and when we lose our ability to speak to each other with a common set of facts and values, to treat each other with the respect and dignity that we are all due, and to have the empathy and compassion to understand experiences other than our own. It requires us to work towards compromise and consensus without trading principle for expediency, a constant effort that needs a spirit of civic mindedness and sense of collective good that seem in particularly short supply when times are difficult. We can do great things when we work together and little when we are pulling ourselves apart.

It is liberal democracy that has allowed Canada to flourish, and to offer a promise of tremendous opportunity that has inspired generations of Scottish migrants to leave their lives behind and begin anew on the other side of the Atlantic. The bargain was never perfect, and it always left too many people out, but it was real, and it offered a sense of hope for a better future for those who were willing and able to seize it. That hope—the same that Trudeau once embodied—has now disappeared, and the country is a colder, darker place for it. Sunny ways have gone, and it is unclear when the storm clouds that have descended over Canadian politics will pass, or what the country will look like when they do.

In many ways, Trudeau’s message is just as relevant today as it was in 2015: that more unites us than divides us, that hope is better than anger, and that tomorrow will be better than today. But politics requires more than platitudes. If liberalism is to be revived, it needs new and convincing answers to the most pressing questions of our time, ones that look forward to the opportunities of the future rather than back to the triumphs of the past. And it needs them fast.

This article was first published in The Scotsman on 10 January 2025.

First published: 13 January 2025

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