Coyne: Canadian politics enters its era of illiberals and unconservatives

Andrew Coyne: What’s going on now is different. The policy direction the Liberals have taken since Mark Carney became leader is revealing itself to be not merely an overdue course correction from the blousy liberalism of his predecessor, but a decisive turn toward illiberalism: harsh on immigration, thuggish on criminal justice, cozy with dictatorships.

At the same time, the emerging doctrine of the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre, combining economic nationalism, truckling to big labour, and reckless trashing of institutions, can only be described as unconservatism. It isn’t that the parties have converged on the middle, as they might have in the past. Rather, they have converged on populism…