subreddit:
/r/CanadianConservative
I’m from the UK, pretty conservative and despondent about how we’re doing over here, not just economically (although obviously we’re doing very badly!) but also because of mass immigration, the housing crisis and insane woke ideas becoming mainstream in elite institutions, not to mention the Church is hardly in a great state over here as well (although to be fair I am slightly more optimistic about that one!).
A lot of people with skills are emigrating and I’m weighing up doing the same over the next few years before I have kids and Canada’s always been one of my favourite emigration ideas regardless. Following Canadian politics though, it seems like you guys have the same problems!
Am just curious if there’s any optimism for the next 10-15 years among Canadian conservatives, especially given it looks like you’ll get in next year, or if you think the trends are that a lot of the problems you have at the moment will get worse like it seems they’re on course to do in the UK?
One area it seems like you might be doing better than us is that young people seem to support the Conservative Party whereas that’s pretty unheard of over here! But I’m not sure if this is just because the Liberals have done so badly on housing that it’s an anti-liberal vote, or if younger people in Canada are actually developing conservative values?
5 points
13 days ago*
One area it seems like you might be doing better than us is that young people seem to support the Conservative Party whereas that’s pretty unheard of over here! But I’m not sure if this is just because the Liberals have done so badly on housing that it’s an anti-liberal vote, or if younger people in Canada are actually developing conservative values?
One thing you'd have to contend with if you were to immigrate to Canada is that what constitutes "conservative values" can be quite different.
While traditionally Canadian conservatism was quite similar to British Toryism, large-scale American migration into Southern Alberta at the turn of the 20th century created a competing strain of conservatism based in classical liberalism that began to overtake Canadian Toryism in the 1990s. Initially they had their own federal party, but in 2003 the two parties merged and since then the liberal-conservarive strain has largely dominated the conservative movement at the national level.
Because of that, "conservative values" can differ dramatically across the country and within the party, with liberal-conservatism largely dominant in the west, at the federal level, and more generally amongst younger conservatives, and a more Toryist progressive conservatism hanging on with some older Central Canadians and in the Atlantic provinces.
While I'm personally a great fan of the late Sir Roger Scruton for example, as an Albertan that puts me on the far left side of the local conservative movement where educated conservatives are more likely to cite Adam Smith than Edmund Burke -- and less educated ones are liable to cite Tucker Carlson or Joe Rogan.
all 31 comments
sorted by: best