Canadians Love a Conspiracy Theory

I moved from the United States to Canada 20 years ago. As a professor of democracy and dictatorship, I was attracted in part by the country’s reputation for tolerance and the strength of its democratic institutions. Partisan differences in my home country had become as entrenched as other irreconcilable ethnic and religious conflicts, but Canadians continued to treat their ideological opponents with respect. They had friends who didn’t vote the same way as them. Their politics were, thankfully, boring. 

I noticed a shift a few years back, however, when I was invited to speak about Ukraine at a conference for mainstream Canadian conservatives. Upon arrival, I was greeted by a table stacked with hagiographies of the 2022 Freedom Convoy that brought neo-Nazis, Confederate flags and supporters of QAnon conspiracy theories to the capital. After my talk, I was surprised by the number of questions I received about Hunter Biden. Canadian conservatives are increasingly mirroring their openly authoritarian counterparts to the south—and being emboldened by them.

Spillover is difficult to avoid. Over the last 50 years or so, the American Republican Party has experienced one of the most troubling political transformations in modern history, evolving from a democratically minded party of the well-to-do into an authoritarian organization that now openly espouses white nationalism. One major indicator of the party’s descent into authoritarianism has been the increasing degree to which conspiracy theories have been embraced by its leaders. In the 1960s, one alleged that President Eisenhower fluoridated water as part a communist plot. Today, similarly nonsensical ideas—like the belief that Trump actually won the 2020 presidential election—are nurtured in online echo chambers like Newsmax and Breitbart. As the American political scientist Brian Klaas has argued, the battle for American democracy is, to an important extent, a battle over reality. 

Related: What Would a U.S. Civil War Mean for Canada?

Canada has, of course, hardly been immune to the far right. In the 1960s, conspiracy-centric groups such as the Edmund Burke Society, which opposed multiculturalism and supported the Vietnam War, carried out arson and other violent attacks in Toronto. More recently, research by Elections Canada from 2021 found that about 40 per cent of Canadians held a so-called “conspiratorial mindset,” characterized by a belief that a small group secretly manipulates world events. Another poll by Leger from 2023 found that one-third of Canadians believed that scientists have found a cure for cancer, but that the government and pharmaceutical companies are withholding it.

Republican influence on conservatism in Canada became particularly evident after COVID. With the support of Trump and other American right-wing activists, Canadians led the Freedom Convoy to Ottawa, where Pierre Poilievre hand-delivered doughnuts to participating truckers. In the summer of 2023, Poilievre railed against what he called the “globalist Davos elites,” and repeatedly warned that the World Economic Forum was trying to control Canada. He also enthusiastically adopted “woke” as a derogatory catch-all to discredit those on the left.

Conspiracism isn’t contained to the federal level, either. Taking a page directly from the Republican playbook, Alberta’s UCP government pushed through anti-trans legislation, including invoking the notwithstanding clause to restrict gender-affirming health care for youth under 16. Further to the right, Mitch Sylvestre, head of the Alberta Prosperity Project, or APP—currently spearheading a separatist referendum—recently declared that the “new world order” is “after” white Christians. Jeffrey Rath, APP’s lawyer, has frequently spoken about the existence of an alleged Ottawa-Beijing conspiracy to keep Alberta in Canada. 

Related: How Trump Turned Canadians Off Populism

These kinds of conspiratorial views threaten Canada’s democracy (and democracy in general) because they are grounded in faith and circular reasoning that make them impervious to falsification or debate. They often regard party politics as a struggle between good and evil, which discourages compromise. The future of Canadian democracy hinges on the preservation of a Conservative Party that vociferously opposes such views, unabashedly supports core institutions and actively rejects anti-woke and derogatory rhetoric—like “F–k Trudeau,” for example—that makes rational debate virtually impossible. Dehumanizing language can easily be used to justify authoritarian abuse.

More generally, Canada needs to protect and nurture a robust and diverse fact-based media. Ominously, mainstream conservatives in this country are increasingly sidelining or outright bullying journalists. For the first time in the modern history of the Conservative Party, Poilievre chose not to allow reporters to accompany him during the most recent federal campaign. Shortly after CTV hired journalist Rachel Gilmore to host a weekly “Fact-Check Friday” during the election, the station cancelled the segment after right-wing backlash, including from Sebastian Skamski, a senior campaign official for Poilievre, who falsely labelled Gilmore a “disgraced disinformation peddler.” This year, Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives initially barred reporters from the party’s annual policy conference.

Traditional media organizations obviously face severe challenges from declining profits. But fact-based journalism is simply too crucial to the survival of democracy to be left to the vagaries of the market. We don’t expect arts organizations to survive on ticket sales alone. As a critical public good, mass media, including non-profit news outlets, require increased government and public support, even in the face of conservative pushback. 

If the current crisis in the U.S. can teach us anything, it’s that Canadians should never take our liberal democratic system for granted. America’s collapse into authoritarianism was accelerated by those who overlooked the early warning signs—from the increased prevalence of conspiracy theories to the end of civil discourse—because they assumed that American democracy was indestructible. If it can fall in one of the world’s oldest and most established republics, it can also happen here. Preserving our gloriously boring politics will require vigilance.

Lucan Way is the distinguished professor of democracy in the department of political science at the University of Toronto.