Foreign Affairs Committee on April 11th, 2019

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

I'm going to call to order the 136th meeting of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development and the continuation, the second day, of hearings on our study of the threats to liberal democracy in Europe.

We are very pleased to be joined for our first panel this morning by Dr. Yascha Mounk, from Washington, D.C. He's an associate professor at the school of advanced international studies and the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. He's also a senior adviser at Protect Democracy and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. Good morning, Dr. Mounk.

Also joining us here in Ottawa, from the University of Georgia, is Dr. Cas Mudde, professor of international affairs in the school of public and international affairs.

I want to welcome both of our guests—our witnesses—for joining us here. Dr. Mounk, I think we should start with you since you're with us on video conference and sometimes the lines go a little crazy. We'll begin with you, if you can take around 10 minutes. We'll move straight to Dr. Mudde, and then of course we'll open it up to all members because I'm sure they're going to have some insightful questions for you this morning.

With that, Dr. Mounk, please proceed.

[Professor Yascha Mounk, Associate Professor, School of Advanced International Studies, and Senior Fellow, Agora Institute, Johns Hopkins University, As an Individual]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

First of all, I want to apologize for not being able to be in Ottawa in person today. I hope to do so on another occasion.

I want to talk about three main points. The first is to just point out that populism is no longer a marginal political force in Europe. It's actually the defining force, and that is the main source of the fracture of liberal democracy at this point. The second is to explain how and why it is that populism is dangerous to liberal democracy, and the third is to speak a little bit about what I see as a potential impact on Canada in particular.

The first thing to point out is that, around the world, the four largest democracies are now arguably ruled by authoritarian populists, not just your neighbour to the south here in Washington, D.C., but also in Brazil, India and arguably Indonesia.

In Europe, the number of populist governments has shot up from about seven in the year 2000 to around 15 or 16 at this point. The average vote share that populist parties gain in national elections has increased from about 8% in 2000 to over 26% now, and the trend continues to rise. We're likely to see a record result for populist parties in upcoming elections for the European Parliament.

One really striking thing when you think of the famous phrase by Winston Churchill, “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the [heart of Europe],” is that it's now actually possible to drive along the line of that iron curtain through countries like Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria and Italy, and never leave a country ruled by populists.

That is the first point. We need to stop thinking of these as insurgent political movements. We need to stop thinking of them as marginal political movements. They are now in many ways the dominant political force in large swaths of Europe.

The question is why that is dangerous to democracy. Why should we be talking about authoritarian populism in a hearing on threats to democracy? To understand that, I think it's helpful to think about the nature of populism, which Cas Mudde and others who are present here have researched a lot as well.

In my understanding, it is at first puzzling why we should think of some of the figures I've mentioned as being related at all. At first sight, it's not obvious why we should class people like Donald Trump in the United States, people like Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, people like Viktor Orbán in Hungary and people like Hugo Chávez and now Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela as part of the same kind of political movement. After all, they have deep ideological differences, especially when it comes to economic policy, where some of them would be classified more as left wing and others more as right wing.

They also have very different enemies. Some of them, for example, tend to victimize and vilify Muslims. Others, Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, for example, tend to victimize and vilify anybody who's not a Muslim. They don't have a set of common enemies.

The way to understand what does connect them, I think, is a rhetorical style, a way of thinking about politics and understanding the nature of politics. What they have in common is the claim that the real reason we have political problems is because of a political leader who is corrupt and self-serving and who cares more about various minority groups than about people who are “like you and me”.

Therefore, they conclude that the only way to deal with this problem is for somebody who truly represents the people to come along, throw out all of the current power structures and stand up for ordinary folk.

The distinctive move here is not just a claim that there are problems with the current government or the current set of politicians and that the opposition can do better or that politics needs some new faces and perhaps even new parties. All of that is a perfectly legitimate part of democratic politics. The distinctive element of these populist claims is to say that they and they alone can represent the people and that anybody who disagrees with them is, by nature of that fact, illegitimate.

That helps to explain why it is that, for a time, populists tend to do so much damage once they enter the government.

The things that we observe in a lot of these countries are that as soon as they get in, they start to delegitimize the opposition as traitors, rather than Her Majesty's loyal opposition. They start to talk about independent institutions that would limit their power and that might stand up to executive overreach, in the form of courts, for example, as “enemies of the people” or as “so-called judges”. They tend very strongly to attack the press, saying that it is working against the people if it is working against the government or criticizing the government.

If the way to understand our political systems is as liberal democracies that are committed both to individual freedom and to collective self-government, the first set of damages tends to be to the liberal element of the political system. It tends to undermine individual rights, in particular minority rights. It tends to run counter to the rule of law and the separation of powers.

But the damage isn't contained to that, because once these governments have managed to make the judiciary dependent on their will and their whim, once they have managed to limit the free press, once they have managed to vilify the opposition and change electoral rules in many countries, the democratic element itself comes under attack. We've seen that happen in countries, like Hungary, which are member states of the European Union, member states of NATO, which have had a long-standing democratic history for over the last 25 years, which political scientists believed to be safe from democratic backsliding. Viktor Orbán, a democratically elected prime minister, is no longer somebody who can be removed through free and fair elections at this point, in my opinion.

What kinds of impacts might this potentially have on Canada? I want to point out three primary things that I think you should worry about.

The first is about business and trade. Canadian companies working in Europe and other countries around the world rely on the rule of law. They assume that their investments will be safe for decades to come and that the success of their investments depends on the quality of their products rather than on political connections. Where populists come into power and undermine the rule of law, that can no longer be assured. You can have threats to private property, but more importantly you can have informal ways in which companies that don't toe a political line, companies that don't have allies among the increasingly powerful ruler, are going to be disadvantaged.

The second threat that is very important is to trade. You see a form of politics that is often not fact-based and that tends to incite irrational fears rather than scientific evidence. As we've seen in the ongoing process of ratification for the free trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, that can lead to all kinds of misinformation, which makes it much harder to persuade people to agree to important trade agreements.

The third point is, obviously, military. We've seen the rise, over time, of populists, and in some cases outright dictators in NATO member states. This has put an obvious strain on this very important military alliance. Populists often have sympathy for other dictatorial regimes so that we see a real rapprochement of many countries ruled by populists across Europe, or governments that have a strong populist element, with Russia and to some extent with China and other adversaries of liberal democracies such as Canada and the United States.

The last point I want to make encompasses all of that. One way of thinking about the threat to liberal democracy, and the threat, especially to the interests of Canada, is simply from existing populist governments, but I think even there there is a deeper strategic threat, which is uncertainty. It is very hard to sustain a military alliance and it is very hard to rely on free trade agreements when you don't know which country will fall next to authoritarian populism and may, therefore, cease to be a reliable partner in the military and the economic scenes.

The threat of populism comes not only through existing populist governments but also through making it much harder for nations like Canada to know what kind of relationship they will be able to enjoy with countries like Italy, France or even Germany, in five or 10 years.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much, Dr. Mounk.

We will now move straight to Dr. Mudde.

[Professor Cas Mudde, Stanley Wade Shelton UGAF Professor of International Affairs, University of Georgia, As an Individual]

Thank you very much and thanks to the committee for giving me the opportunity to speak here today.

Given that we study the same thing, we have quite a lot of overlap so what I will do is focus on some points that Yascha hasn't mentioned and elaborate on some of the points he did.

I agree that populism is the defining force at the moment. However, I think it's very important to remember that on average they get only about 20% of the vote, and that the percentage ranges from 70% or 80% in certain countries to almost zero in others. In the vast majority of countries of the EU, populists, whether of the right or the left, are a minority. The reason they define politics today is that other parties allow them to set the agenda. I think this is very important. We're not all Hungary where, by and large, free and fair elections are no longer around and you have to play by their rules.

In most countries, self-professed liberal democrats still set the rules and still control the media. However, they have pretty much given the public debate and the issues, as well as the issue framing, to the populists. I think that's an important point. It points to something that I think is much more problematic, something that is almost like an ideological vacuum.

Today there are very few parties that defend what used to be the absolute consensus 20 years ago—things like economic integration, European integration and cultural integration. All of these things still happen but no one defends them. I think the best example was the “Remain” campaign during the EU referendum in the U.K., which, by and large, had nothing to say other than the alternative is worse. It never sold what the European Union did, and if you don't sell liberal democracy, if you don't tell people why it's good, it creates a space for those who have an agenda, even if it is a very problematic agenda.

I think it's also important to understand that populist rule is different from what we generally think authoritarian rule is. Authoritarian rule does things that go pretty much against the law. There are blatant violations of law. The clever populists, in contrast, stay within the law. They control the law, and there's no better example than Viktor Orbán in Hungary, who through a very well-timed set of changes has legally changed the whole system so it works for him.

American scholar Kim Lane Scheppele has referred to this as a “Frankenstate”, and in a Frankenstate, every individual, specific law is totally democratic. Actually, Orbán almost always makes sure that each law also exists somewhere else. Whenever you criticize him on a law, he will say, for example, France has it. In other cases, he will say Germany has it, or Canada has it. However, when you put them all together, you have an illiberal democratic state.

In the simplest of things, various countries have first past the post. Some countries have only one electoral district. This is perfectly democratic, but if you have first past the post and only one district, then one gets everything. You can have two rules that are each pretty much democratic, but when they work together, they can create a massive problem. That is pretty much how the smarter populists work. Everything individually is almost impossible to criticize, but you have to assess it on how everything works together.

Let me focus on the international relations of the populists. There's a lot of speculation about a “populist international”, but I do not believe such a thing exists. First of all, populism is divided ideologically. Left-wing populists rarely work together with right-wing populists.

However, even the radical right populists, who are by far the most important, share mostly a negative agenda. They share an anti-establishment agenda, which means that they are also anti-international establishment. They're Euroskeptic. They're skeptic about any multinationalism, be it NATO or the UN.

However, they differ on all kinds of different issues. For example, some parties are pretty much pro-American—the Dutch or the Poles—and many are anti-American, particularly in eastern and southern Europe. The position on Israel is very different. Some have become very pro-Israel, and others are still staunchly anti-Israel, bordering on anti-Semitic. They have very different positions on NATO, which is absolutely crucial to Baltic or Polish populist radical right parties, whereas some other parties see it skeptically.

They're skeptical about the UN, although that's more of a fascination or an obsession of the U.S. populist radical right than many others, but they're even very divided over the EU. Today, because of Brexit and the way it is going, there are very few parties that still openly call for an exit. Instead, quite a lot, in part because of their growing success, now don't want to get out of the EU. They want to transform the EU. They want to create an EU in their image, and this is very much what Viktor Orbán wants. It's to a certain extent what Matteo Salvini wants in Italy.

However, there, again, they have problems because in the end they're still nationalist, and their national interests are more important. A good example that we see is with regard to the so-called immigration crisis, which, of course, is crucial to the recent success of these parties.

Viktor Orbán in Hungary doesn't want to share and redistribute immigrants because that would mean that Hungary would get more, whereas Italy does want to redistribute immigrants because that would mean it would have fewer. Quite a lot of these points on which, in opposition, they have been very strong, they now find out are pretty problematic when they're in power. I think this is important. I agree with Yascha that the insecurity is problematic. I think the insecurity that comes out of the White House is much different from the insecurity that comes out of various other countries. Whatever Hungary does is much less important, obviously, than whatever the U.S. does.

However, if you look at it, in the end, very few of these governments have done fundamental things. I think Italy is a very good example. The new populist government came in with a lot of bravura. They were going to not do this and they were going to do that. In the end, they kind of rolled over. There is still damage to be done, but it's important that, so far, they haven't really offered an alternative. They mostly frustrate the existing order. Again, Donald Trump is a very good example. He doesn't blow up NATO. He doesn't blow up even the climate treaty. He just pulls out, which leaves space for others and confusion.

This is pretty much what populism is doing. It's a wake-up call to the liberal democratic forces, which are still in a majority, to actually come up with not just an anti-populist agenda, which would also be divisive and moral, but a positive liberal democratic alternative. I think that is lacking today.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much, Dr. Mudde, and to both of you.

We'll move straight into questions. I believe we're going to begin with MP Kusie, please.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Dr. Mounk, could you please expand on, in your opinion, U.S. populism versus European populism? What would you see as the similarities and as the differences, please?

[Prof. Yascha Mounk]

Thank you very much. That's obviously an important question.

I think there are a lot of ideological similarities. Again, I think the main driving force of how to understand populism is just the anti-establishment element, which basically delegitimizes anybody who disagrees with those forces. I think you see that very similarly, whether it is in the form of Donald Trump, the form of the Polish government, the form of the Hungarian government or the form of the larger rising populist movements, even in countries like Germany, Scandinavia and so on.

I think one important difference is that a lot of the European populist forces are actually better set up to undermine the political system because they have managed to build organizations so that when they come into government, they are able to appoint a lot of like-minded people. They are starting, in many countries in Europe, to have real bureaucratic experience and expertise, because they've been in parliament in many places now for about a decade. They've had experience in government in some places again and again, so I think their actual ability to pursue their agenda can sometimes be strong.

What we see in the United States is not the rise of a new populist party with a slow growth in strength that ultimately takes over the system, but a hostile takeover of a pre-existing political party by one populist. Now, obviously, I think Donald Trump has in the last two and a half years managed to create a circle of people around him, and he has managed to turn the Republican Party into a populist force to a much greater extent than people would have predicted when he was elected in the fall of 2016. But I do think that the combination of a lack of bureaucratic and government experience in Donald Trump himself, and the lack of a coherent organization around him that actually is deeply committed to his agenda, has somewhat frustrated what he has been able to do.

To me, the greater question is what will happen in the United States if populism remains in control of the Republican Party after 2020 or 2024 and you end up with a president and an administration, a cohort of people, who are actually ideologically committed to some of the things that Donald Trump stands for. I think at that point the damage to the system could be a lot more severe than what we're seeing at the moment.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Thank you.

Dr. Mudde, you touched upon a concept within the evaluations of democracies called “forbearance”, which is the gradual erosion of democracy over time.

I'm a former diplomat. My career was largely spent in the Americas, so I think of course of Maduro in Venezuela, where we saw the erosion of the legislative branch, the judicial branch and finally the media. Could you perhaps comment on the route forbearance has taken within these European populist nations, please?

[Prof. Cas Mudde]

The term “forbearance” is used in the Levitsky-Ziblatt book. By and large, it's argued that politicians should use that to protect overreach.

I think one of the things that populism shows, to a certain extent, is how feeble many systems are. Many liberal democratic systems are set up on the assumption of forbearance: that people will not use all the power they legally have. This has, to a large extent, happened for most of the time and, I would argue, also quite often because parties didn't have all the power.

There's a big difference between Hungary, for example, and Austria. In Austria, the right-wing populists have to share power with a different party, which has bent over backwards to them but overall still controls them, so the FPÖ is kind of forced to engage in forbearance. There is nothing that holds Orbán back. I would argue that a liberal democratic party would still have more forbearance than Orbán has, but if it would really have its own power only by itself, it would also push further.

I think one of the most remarkable things—I think the U.S. is the best example but there are many others—is that I see this as a teaching moment. I see this as a teaching moment to see how much of our system is actually not regulated and is purely based on pretty much trust, the trust that people will behave democratically.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

That leads me to my last question. You discussed an ideological vacuum that creates the possibility for this populism. In your opinion, what creates the ideological vacuum? Really, that's what this is about. This is about filling a void.

[Prof. Cas Mudde]

I think it is success, to be honest. I think social democracy by and large has given in to its own success. Established welfare states have achieved most of their original program. Pretty similarly, the neo-liberals pretty much established ideological hegemony where everyone accepted the market, as does the Europeanist. Once you have success and pretty much everyone is on board—or at least act as if they're on board—you don't discuss it anymore. You don't really argue about why this is fundamentally good. You start to talk about details.

That's fine when things go well, but if you have a great recession and then you have a so-called refugee crisis, you have to come up with a bit more than tweaks here and tweaks there. Because of success, we have kind of lost our fundamental ideological debate.

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

It's almost like international osmosis.

Thank you very much, Professor.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

We will now move to MP Saini please.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Good morning and welcome to both of you.

Dr. Mounk, I'm going to start with you first. You wrote something that was a bit concerning to me and I hope you can help me to understand more. You've written that nationalism is likely to remain a defining political force for the foreseeable future. You've also written that the only way to keep the destructive potential of nationalism in check is to fight for a society in which collective identity transcends ethnic and religious boundaries.

What I've taken from some of the things you've written is that there is a very fine line between patriotism and nationalism.

If you were going to give advice, how do you maintain a strong sense of positive patriotism and fight against a negative type of nationalism?

[Prof. Yascha Mounk]

That's an important question. To put it into context a little bit, I grew up Jewish in Germany and certainly a defensive nationalism or even patriotism did not come naturally to me, as you can imagine in that situation.

As I was growing up, I had the hope that we could overcome certain forms of nationalism completely and leave them behind in the 20th century, which they so cruelly shaped. When you look around the world today, you see that nationalism remains an incredibly powerful force in all parts of the world. That's something that connects the democratic world even with non-democratic parts of the world.

Especially in places where we've tried to suppress nationalism a bit, it is now rearing its head again in its ugliest form because people are saying, “I'm not being allowed to express this kind of identity, so I'm going to show you.”

You made a distinction, which a lot of people in academic literature make as well, between patriotism and nationalism. I'm a little skeptical of that distinction because I think it's a little too easy for us. It says that there's a great form of this that is positive and all about solidarity and wonderful things, and that's patriotism. Then there's a dangerous form that's terrible and so on, and that's nationalism.

I think we're actually talking about the same phenomenon, which can find expression in positive and negative ways. For me, I think of nationalism as a half-domesticated animal. Our task is not to vanquish it. It's to keep domesticating it. It will always remain dangerous but the best thing we can do is to try to interpret it in a way that's inclusive and that ensures that we have a notion of what it is to be German or Italian. I think Canada already is leading on this, in that people of different ethnicities, religions or national origins can be seen as and feel fully Canadian. I think that patriotism or nationalism that is based on that inclusive notion is the best response to the exclusionary nationalism, rather than trying to say it's vanquishable all together.

[Raj Saini, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Dr. Mudde, I have a question for you.

You've written extensively about the European elections in May. One thing that you've written about is that now Mr. Salvini is taking more of a leadership role. You have the European Conservatives and Reformists party and the Europe of Nations and Freedom party. You have written that, because of Brexit and some of the changes in the European Parliament, these will create something called an “ECR-plus”. Within the ECR-plus, you will have Mr. Salvini and Mr. Kaczynski in leadership roles. You talk about the radical right parties, saying that sometimes these parties have achieved some level of success. You mentioned about 20%.

There are other parties now. You have the Alternative for Germany party and the Vox party in Spain.

Will the European elections be a reflection of the domestic feeling in those countries or is it vice versa? I'm trying to find that link. Are countries becoming more radical right and, therefore, that expression will be in the European election?

The second point I have is that when you talk about radical parties and about some of the political systems in Europe, a lot of these radical right parties will become mainstream because the more centrist parties will need their support for governance.

Those are the two questions I have for you.

[Prof. Cas Mudde]

Thank you very much. These are good but also complex questions.

Simplistically stated, European elections have always been primarily domestic elections in the sense that the issues being discussed are domestic issues rather than European. This has changed a little bit, particularly in countries that have held referendums on European issues. Then they become a bit more about Europe as well. The two are very closely related anyway, because the national elite is always the European elite as well.

I expect, by and large, populism in general and the populist radical right to do a little better in 2019 for the simple reason that they already did better in 2014 and in 2009. Certain parties are going to disappear; others are going to come up.

The key question is not so much how many seats they win overall but how many seats they can bring together in one group. On that, I must say it's difficult to speculate. Salvini had his big meeting where he was going to present the new group. In the end, there was no Kaczynski and there was no Orbán. To me, personally, I think the only person who can bring all of them together is Orbán.

A lot of the smaller parties, particularly west European parties, don't want to be lead by Kaczynski and Law and Justice. They think it's too Catholic, too parochial. They see Orbán as a European player, but Orbán will ride out the European People's Party as long as he can, because they can protect him better than any new group.

The issue of mainstreaming is extremely important. This applies particularly to the populist radical right and much more towards their nativism kind of xenophobic nationalism than towards their populism, for obvious reasons. It's a bit more difficult to be populist when you're part of the decades-old mainstream. It is increasingly difficult to see boundaries objectively between certain mainstream parties and certain populist radical right parties. There's the Conservative Party in Britain, at this moment, and UKIP, for example. There's Les Républicains in France and le Rassemblement national. There's ÖVP and FPÖ, and CSU Bavaria and AfD.

In all of these, there are differences, I still believe. However, if you just look at what they say during campaigns, you can clearly see that they've moved together, and it's not the radical right that has moved. They still say exactly the same. It is the mainstream right and, in certain countries, the mainstream left that has moved towards the radical right.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

Next is MP Caron, please.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

My first question is for you, Mr. Mudde.

I was intrigued by the idea that there was a void to be filled, that social democracy had accomplished what it set out to accomplish, that the lack of debate had opened the door to neo-liberalism, which then accomplished everything it had to accomplish, and the lack of debate opened the door to the authoritarian populism we are seeing today.

First, I'd like to know why the void was filled by populism instead of some other leanings.

Second, I'd like to know how, in accordance with our Liberal democratic rules, we can create institutional security structures to prevent this type of situation, especially these days, when more authoritarian or more populist groups promote mistrust in the elites. On top of that, social media exacerbates it all. I'm thinking about the phenomenon of fake news.

How can we establish this type of institutional security, in accordance with our existing system and rules?

[Prof. Cas Mudde]

Obviously, I don't have the right answer because I've been shouting several answers for the last few decades.

I think what is absolutely crucial is that the response is not aimed at defeating the populist. If we did defeat the populist, we would still have that distrust. We would still have that sense that liberal democracy isn't functioning well. The response has to come in strengthening liberal democracy. By definition, if you strengthen liberal democracy, you weaken populism.

How do you do that? First and foremost, you do it by being honest and by accepting that various things did not work perfectly. It is pretty important because in the current anti-populist mode we're in, we have made them the evil ones and us the good ones, as if everything were great before. I think it is crucial that ideology is brought back. People don't just want to know how to make a certain policy. They want to understand why. They want to understand why we have a European Union. Most people are not going to support that just for economic arguments. Of course, if they do, then a great recession is the end of it.

The argument initially was “no more war,” and that has completely disappeared. Similarly, social democratic parties have pretty much given up on the key ideology of international solidarity, and the Christian Democratic party is the same. I think an ideological renewal, as well as an explanation of why we support liberal democracy. The protection of minorities is not about one specific minority. Everyone, at a certain point in time, can and will be a minority and that system will then profit them.

It can only be strengthened through a positive agenda. Let's be frank here. The trust in the system was lost over various decades. It will not be won back by one great PR campaign. It has to be won back by a clear, ideological agenda that is then implemented consistently.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

That you very much. It's really interesting.

Mr. Mounk, you spoke about the issue of trade being used as a kind of lightning rod for fear, that creates fear and that leads to a kind of populism. Two days ago we heard from Mr. Galston, who told us that trade also acts as an economic catalyst for the conditions that lead to authoritarian populism. Populists often try to attract a segment of the population that feels neglected economically. One example would be workers in the declining manufacturing sectors whom our systems seem to have abandoned.

Do you think that the fear is based on the economic discourse of trade and free trade? Does trade also create the conditions to help grow this populism?

[Prof. Yascha Mounk]

This is a very important question.

In recent years, there has been a big debate in Canada, the United States and Europe over whether populism was tied strictly to the economy or whether it was also caused by identity, immigration or perhaps social networks. I think it is all three.

To fully understand, we first need to look at the idea of social status. For example, populist movements are the strongest and receive the most support from people in the most isolated, rural areas, with a bit less economic growth. This is what we see as the rationale for support of populist movements in almost all countries. It's clear that the economy is a factor.

Am I rich or do I have a good job? That's not the question, because lots of people who vote for populism have good jobs. Do I see a future for my region? that's the question. Do I have a reason to be optimistic? Will the region I live in and where I want my children to live be better off in 20 years? Will I be in a part of the country that is being overlooked? Will my children have to move to the capital or to a big city to have opportunities? These are very important questions.

Immigration, or change, is also connected here, in the sense that people are trying to determine who is a real member of a society, for example. Imagine a small town 40 years ago, where many people who may not have been the wealthiest, most intelligent or most skilled could at least tell themselves that they were German and not one of those Turkish immigrants, that they were men and that this gave them some privileges, or that they were not black or weren't from Asia. A lot of these people feel as though they've lost their social status. They're rebelling against this loss of social status, which can be a significant catalyst.

Social networks are important, because they give these frustrated people a way into the political arena and a way to dominate political discourse in a way that may not have been possible 20 or 30 years ago.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Michael Levitt]

Thank you very much.

Next is MP Sidhu, please.

[Jati Sidhu, Liberal, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you both for sharing your wisdom with us this morning. My question goes to Professor Mounk.

Last year, you wrote an article titled “How Liberals Can Reclaim Nationalism”. In this article, you wrote that the situation regarding nationalism is similar in Canada and the United States, as in the European countries. Therefore, I am curious whether it is your belief that nationalism is on the rise in Canada.

How do we address this issue in a democratic country like Canada?