Introduction: Passive Revolution in 2025
In the spring of 2025, when Canada narrowly avoided being swept up in a global wave of electoral successes for the (far) right, it was a puzzling moment. After years in which it appeared to be all but inevitable that Pierre Poilievre’s federal Conservative Party of Canada would form the first government of the post-Justin Trudeau era, the election of another minority Liberal Party government, led by Prime Minister Mark Carney, could seem an occasion for relief. An apparently ascendant right-wing in Canada was not so ascendant after all. However, notwithstanding the contingency of the minority Parliament and the initiation of US trade war upon the inauguration of the second Trump administration, it may be wrong to think that Canada has rejected or been spared the rise of the right. For the time being, at least, Canada’s Liberals have succeeded in a classic passive-revolutionary exercise: metabolizing and re-presenting elements of a threatening movement to ensure political survival and, as much as possible, re-establish electoral and policy dominance.