Make Canada Conservative (Again)

On the Need and the Path to Revitalize the Canadian Postliberal Tradition

Roughly two weeks ago, Canada’s premier conservative organization, “Canada Strong and Free Network,” held its main annual meeting in Ottawa, a stone’s throw from the magnificent government buildings of Canada’s Parliament Hill. I was honored to appear among a varied group of speakers, most hailing from various Canadian organizations, sprinkled with a few Americans such as Chad Wolf and Ambassador Robert Lighthizer. I was invited months ago when a speaking opportunity to Canada seemed both fetching and unremarkable, but in the interim now took place during a fraught moment in U.S.-Canada relations.

The American invitees were noteworthy in at least one respect: Wolf, Lighthizer, and I represented not only various miens of the American “New Right,” but a different flavor altogether from the mainstream of Canadian conservatism. As was evident in the profusion of various booths in the hallway outside the main meeting hall, together representing a wide variety of Canadian organizations, interest groups, industries, and think tanks, Canadian conservatism remains firmly under the control of the “Old Right” - the Right of Reagan-era fusionism, and even today heavily overrepresented by libertarian business interests. I encountered not just one, but several booths proudly sporting the visage of Ayn Rand as an icon of a “conservatism” — a label that Rand herself rejected, and a form of “conservatism” that many Americans now rightly suspect of not having conserved anything at all. Joining her on one banner - the “Ladies of Liberty Alliance” - was the libertarian, transgender economist Deirdre McCloskey, dedicated foe of conservatism. Such is the general state of conservatism in Canada.

In their invitation to me, the organizers expressed their hope and belief that it would benefit Canadian conservatives to hear an alternative perspective such as mine. Ironically enough, in spite of various trade imbalances, it appears that America today has a booming export industry of “new conservatives,” while places such as Canada at the moment lack a home-grown brand. Or, at least, that appears to be the current state of things, until the many young people whom I met at the conference begin to assume positions of power and influence over these or altogether new institutions. They are perhaps several years “behind” their American counterparts, but many (in sotto voce tones) expressed utter disillusionment with the institutionalized “conservatism” in Canada, and spoke of their great interest in the ideas being explored by the American “new right.”

However, as in the domain of natural resources, in fact Canada has a rich if today subterranean vein of postliberalism already at its disposal, ripe for exploration and rediscovery. During my talk I underlined the prescience and wisdom of Canadian political philosopher George Grant, a figure almost forgotten not only in the broader conservative world, but even among conservatives in his native Canada. If my efforts will bear any fruit, in the not-distant future, such conferences will display far fewer pictures of Ayn Rand (or, ideally, none whatsoever), and far more of George Grant.

The dire need for a reintroduction of Grant to Canadian conservatism is no more vividly demonstrated than in the dramatic reaction of mainstream Canadians in response to President Trump’s expressed interest in making Canada America’s 51st-state, particularly in a dramatic swing in opinion polls in advance of the Canadian election taking place on this coming Monday, April 28.

In the wake of the felt threat of American imperialism, Grant’s analysis in his classic if largely-forgotten 1965 work Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism provides a discerning analysis of why this dramatic shift in electoral support, away from Conservatives and toward Liberals, was not only unsurprising, but could have been predicted. Grant also provides a roadmap for how Canadian conservatism needs to remake itself, especially if it loses in a few days’ time, but even if it wins.

Grant’s most famous work is often and not altogether incorrectly regarded as a deeply pessimistic threnody for the prospects of Canadian nationalism - as its subtitle attests. Its immediate occasion was the defeat of then-Prime Minister John Diefenbaker, who served as Canada’s PM from 1957-1963.¹ Grant’s opening chapters lament not so much the electoral defeat of Diefenbaker by the Liberal party, but Diefenbaker’s failure (in his view) to articulate, defend, and institutionalize a distinctive form of conservative Canadian nationalism. Grant’s analysis prophetically intuited that Canadian conservatism instead would become dominated by libertarian impulses, which - in his correct view - would prove supine to the anti-nationalist forces of modern capitalism. In Grant’s estimation, Diefenbaker did not see clearly enough that the effort to forge an alliance between more rural, nationalist elements of Canada with the business interests located especially in Toronto and Montreal would inexorably draw Canadian conservatism into its current form: “no such combination was possible, and therefore our nation was bound to disappear” (16).²

Reading Grant’s descriptions of Diefenbaker was striking for striking similarities to the very recent history in America, and specifically, the titanic opposition of the establishment toward Diefenbaker which anticipated the more recent response to Trump. This early paragraph in particular jumped out at me:

It is interesting to speculate why Diefenbaker raised the concentrated wrath of the established classes. Most of his critics claim that he is dominated by ambition, almost to the point of egomania…. His actions turned the ruling class into a pack howling for his blood. Astute politicians who are only interested in political power, simply do not act this way.

The parallels don’t end there. Diefenbaker was propelled to victory through widely populist support, in open opposition to forces that were undermining Canadian sovereignty. The main force, at that time, was not called “globalism,” but rather, “continentalism,” or the effective merging of Canada to the liberal economic and military juggernaut of the United States. To the extent that Grant deeply admired Diefenbaker - and thought he might have been the vehicle for the birth of a modern, Canadian nationalism - it was to the extent that he believed that Canada must remain both culturally and economically distinct from the United States and the temptations of “continentalism.”

This would have had to have been accomplished by uncompromising commitments to two main programs:

1. Rejection of the libertarian hostility to government, and even an embrace of “planning” against the supposed benefits of the invisible hand of the “free market.”

2. A strong working alliance between the older Tory tradition of the English-speaking stock who had departed America at the time of the revolution, and the more traditionalist Catholic French-speaking Quebecois.

Grant’s positive praise for Diefenbaker’s nationalist economics would be all but unrecognizable to most of the denizens of contemporary Canadian “conservatism” (based on what I saw and heard at the recent conference). Grant spoke admiringly of Canada’s tradition of public projects and a committed civil service (in the British tradition, he underscored). But he also noted the incoherence to be found in Diefenbaker’s position, one which combined “prairie populism” with “private-enterprise ideology,” and noted that “his talk of free enterprise” stood at odds with “an older Canadian conservatism” which “had used public power to achieve national purposes” (14-15). Ultimately, in Grant’s telling, “the free-enterprise assumptions of the Diefenbaker administration led to actions that were obviously anti-national.” Grant would be entirely unsurprised that, in the not-distant future, both right- and left-liberals in the U.S. and Canada would strike free-trade agreements that rendered the idea of nationalist economics all but moot for both nations.

Meanwhile, the suspicion of the Quebecois toward English-speaking Canadians was likely only matched by the the inherent anti-Catholicism of the old Tory stock, rendering Grant’s second hope stillborn. Both of these aims were unmet, and even proved to be unworkable, by the end of Diefenbaker’s term.

But even had Diefenbaker successfully held at bay the libertarian impulses within his own party (and himself), and even had an alliance between the conservative elements of English- and French-speaking Canada been possible, the massive gravitational pull of the United States (and, in Grant’s view, modernity itself) was simply irresistible:

“Modern civilization makes all local cultures anachronistic…. The argument that Canada, a local culture, must disappear can, therefore be stated in three steps. First, men everywhere move ineluctably toward membership in the universal and homogenous state. Second, Canadians live next to a society at is the heart of modernity. Third, nearly all Canadians think that modernity is good, so nothing essential distinguishes Canadians from Americans…” (53).

He recognized the irresistible dynamic that was likely insurmountable by any single political figure, no matter how gifted:

The United States is [simply] the most progressive society on earth and therefore the most radical force for the homogenizing of the world. By its very nature the capitalist system makes the national boundaries only matters of political formality” (42-3).

Grant’s lament was not only for a missed opportunity, resembled the impotent cry of Cassandra against a prophecy discernible by recognition of near-inevitable forces.

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The failure Canada to develop a distinctive form of conservative Canadian nationalism is today evident in the dynamics of its imminent election and, in particular, the dramatic shift in polling for the Conservative and Liberal parties coincident with the exact moment of President Trump’s inauguration.

Famously or infamously, President Trump began sounding his interest in incorporating Canada - whether fully or in part - into the United States (along with Greenland). Until that point, the Conservative Party, led by Pierre Poilievre, had been comfortably leading in the polls, reflecting deep dissatisfaction and exhaustion with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party. Recognizing his deep unpopularity, Trudeau stepped down on January 6, 2025. The current Prime Minister, Mark Carney (Liberal), was selected as party leader on March 9 and appointed as Prime Minister five days later on March 14. By that time, however, the fortunes of the two main parties had already dramatically switched, with polling indicating that the Liberal party now would comfortably beat the Conservatives. This sudden shift occurred in early January, allowing the possibility that Trudeau’s resignation was the cause; however, nearly every observer recognizes that the shift occurred at the very moment that Trump began expressing strong interest in making Canada into the U.S.’s 51st state.

What’s so striking and even peculiar about this reversal is, on its face, how unexpected such a reaction should be. Around the world, in nearly every advanced liberal democracy, the conservative party is also the party of a renewed nationalism - parties that now insist on stronger borders, a bolstered national identity, economic nationalism, and suspicion toward trans-national institutions or “globalization.” And yet, in response to the nationalist assertions of Donald Trump, Canada quite suddenly, dramatically, and instinctively, piled in behind the Liberal party effectively as their “nationalist” response, in defense of Canada’s sovereignty against the incursions of the American behemoth.

In the most philosophic chapter of his book - Chapter 5 - Grant makes a startling claim, one all the more arresting when recognizing that it was written in 1965 in the midst of the Cold War. While Marxism, he writes, is indeed a progressivist and revolutionary doctrine, it stops short of the far more thoroughgoing revolutionary nature of modern liberalism. Marxism, Grant argued, was premised on the theory that revolution would elicit in a certain political fruition, namely, a world in which alienation between the classes, between man and his work, between man and nature, and between man and man ceases to exist. “Marxism includes therefore a doctrine of human good (call it, if you will, happiness)…. But such a doctrine of good means that Marx is not purely a philosopher of the age of progress; he is rooted in the teleological philosophy that pre-dates the age of progress” (54-5).

By contrast, liberalism “denies any conception of the good.” That denial is the root commitment of liberalism, its fundamental essence. “Nothing must stand in the way of our absolute freedom to create the world as we want it. There must be no conception of the good that puts limitations on human action. This definition of man as freedom constitutes the heart of the age of progress. The doctrine of progress is not, as Marx believed, the perfectibility of man, but an open-ended progression in which men will be endlessly free to make the world as they want it.” (54-55; emphasis mine).

At this point Grant makes his most extraordinary claim, especially in light of the era in which he wrote it: the greater threat of revolutionary progressivism arises not from Soviet Marxism, but from liberalism, particularly as embodied in Canada’s powerful neighbor to the south - the United States of America. “North-American liberalism expresses the belief in open-ended progress more accurately than Marxism.” Grant’s claim that America — as the consummately liberal nation — was more revolutionary than the Marxist Soviet Union departs quite notably from the then-regnant “conservative” theories in the United States, especially those of Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin (toward whose thought Grant nevertheless expressed admiration). According to their accounts, which proved more attractive to American conservatives for reasons likely to do with a tendency toward self-congratulation amid the Cold War —American liberalism was a more conservative philosophy than Marxism, because it was premised on a theory of fixed human nature (as depicted in Locke’s “state of nature”). Grant — arguably more capable of discerning the dangers not only from Marxism, but even more insidious dangers emanating from American liberalism — recognized that liberalism was more radical due to its fundamental commitment of freedom that ultimately sought (and required) liberation from human nature itself. Grant was especially attentive to the close alignment between liberalism and an embrace of transformative technology. “The conquest of human and non-human nature becomes the only public value” (56).

The entire thrust of Grant’s powerful, short, work, was a Cassandra-like warning that Canadian conservatism should not model itself to the so-called “conservatism” of American liberalism. Canada might (or, might have) served as an alternative model (or, a path not taken,) for North America. By instead reviving a pre-liberal form of conservatism that combined economic common-good nationalism and social conservatism that was especially to be encouraged among the old Tory remnant and Quebecois Catholics, Canada might forge a distinctive path, providing an alternative model for conservatism in contrast to its massively powerful southern neighbor. Grant’s lament was that, by failing to take this path during Diefenbaker’s term, Canada had likely sealed its fate as a mere “branch office” of the American liberal imperium.

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All of which brings us to the political dynamics of the past several weeks, leading to Monday’s vote. Had Canada generally, and Canadian conservatism in particular, heeded the counsel of George Grant, a very different response to Donald Trump could have been expected. If we imagine for a moment that Canada had developed this alternate version of conservatism, in the first instance, it might well have provided a model that would have been recognized far earlier by its southern neighbor. The Canadian nation would not have been surprised by the populist discontents that fueled the ascent of Trump, recognizing that liberalism is ultimately an anti-human philosophy, and therefore cannot be borne by ordinary citizens who have been drowning in the supposed “blessings of liberty,” both economic and social. The general attitude would more likely have been, “what took you so long?”

Such a conservatism would also have recognized that the best defense against a renewed American nationalism (even the stated threat against Canada’s own ongoing nationhood) would not be to rush headlong into support for left-liberals, who, as the vanguards of advanced progressivism, are animated by a deep mistrust toward the very idea of the nation. The irony of the Canadian reaction is rich, profound, and stunning: in response to the rise of American nationalism, and lacking any well-developed nationalist tradition of its own of the sort which George Grant had commended sixty-years ago, Canadians shifted their political support for its own continued existence to the party of … anti-nationalist globalism. One can only imagine how George Grant would simultaneously both laugh and cry at this absurdity.

Grant affords us yet further insight into the sudden shift of Canadian support to liberal left. Grant notes that there are two groups that deny that America is the “spearhead of progress.” The first - as we have noted - are the American “conservatives,” a.k.a., right-liberals. The second, ironically, are Canada’s Marxists, who regard American capitalism as the essence of “reactionary” and not “progressive” forces. Here again, a certain irony developed that Grant perceived even in 1965: believing Marxism to be more “revolutionary” than American liberalism, the Canadian left became “nationalist” in the name of their supposed more progressive worldview: “Canadian Marxists have therefore argued that Canadian nationalism serves the interests of progress because our incorporation into the United States would add to the power of reaction in the world. To be a progressive in Canada is to be nationalistic” (54; emphasis mine).

Again, the irony is thick. Canadian nationalism-qua-progressivism is ultimately anti-nationalist, ultimately a mirror image of the American liberalism it purports to oppose, while a genuine (conservative) nationalism would have afforded a far more genuine alternative to American liberalism and faux Canadian nationalism. Lacking that conservative nationalist tradition, the only “anti-American” mode that Canadians can conceive is to shift left - i.e., a “nationalism” that ultimately coincides with the anti-nationalist trajectory of advanced liberalism. Grant would not have been remotely surprised by the sudden and immediate shift to the left of the Canadian electorate in response to Trump, and would likely have simply said, if not “I told you so,” then “you should have listened.”

All is not lost. After all, Grant believed that liberalism was “baked into the American cake,” that America lacked any pre-modern tradition that might have served as a break on its inherent progressivist liberalism. And yet, unexpectedly, even miraculously, America has (at least momentarily) arrested its own progressivist liberal tendencies in its rejection both of liberal economics and liberationist progressive social ideals. As Grant would surely recognize, if America could achieve this unexpected achievement - in many ways against the grain of core aspects of its own liberal tradition - how much more likely might it be that Canada could achieve the same?

If Canada’s Conservatives are indeed licking their wounds on Monday night, they may be tempted to “blame Trump” and double-down on the “conservatism” of yesteryear, i.e., with appeals to the wisdom of Ayn Rand. But one hopes that their openness to the ideas from some of the countercultural conservatives “down south” - including yours truly - will nudge them to recognize that the departure from their own postliberal conservative tradition would have likely strengthened the Conservative Party in response not only to American nationalism, but American liberal globalism.

In the event the Conservatives win, the danger of misreading the election results is even more perilous, likely leading them to the temptation to continue business as usual (figuratively and literally). But, here again, right-liberals can never really “defeat” left-liberals, since they will always both be their slightly tardier doppelgängers, and will ultimately simply be absorbed into the project of radical liberation premised on the conquest of human and non-human nature.

Whatever the results of Monday’s election, conservatives of both nations should hope and pray that Canadians re-discover the best of their own tradition - captured and available in Grant’ extraordinary lament - while their American brethren acknowledge that they have much to learn from one of the greatest, if too-often overlooked, political philosophers ever to examine the great challenge and potential promise of a genuiely North American conservative political philosophy.

1. Interestingly and fittingly, a recent biography of Diefenbaker was just published, and was the subject of a panel at the “Canada Strong and Free” conference: Freedom Fighter: John Diefenbaker’s Battle for Canadian Liberties and Independence by Bob Plamondon (Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, 2025).

2. George Grant, Lament for a Nation: The Defeat of Canadian Nationalism (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000).