I clearly remember what I tend to consider my first close encounter with populism - not least because the populist I met said something I couldn't believe at the time, but turned out to be (kind of) right.
In hindsight, I think my instincts were (somewhat) off because I didn’t yet understand where he was coming from - either figuratively, or literally. He seemingly appeared out of nowhere, emerging unexpectedly from a crowd - which in retrospect, was quite fitting.
In the summer of 2010, at the Taste of the Danforth, a street festival in Toronto’s Greektown, he was among a group of surprisingly young people campaigning for Rob Ford, who was running for mayor on a platform to end wasteful spending at city hall, armed with slogans like “stop the gravy train” and “respect for taxpayers”.
The exchange was rather silly, yet straightforward. He blurted out, “vote for Rob Ford, he’s going to fix city hall”. My friends and I, almost reflexively, countered, “that’s not going to happen”. His deadpan response, as he walked away, was, “yes, it is”.
The whole thing was, obviously, stupid, and I remember wondering why we even bothered engaging with him. It was childish. Yet, it stuck in my mind because Ford did indeed end up winning that election, completely catching me off guard. I genuinely didn’t think he was the type of person we, in Toronto, would elect. Up until then, I had really believed we, collectively, were better than that.
It was among the first in a series of similar electoral surprises across the Western world. And since it occurred so close to home - actually, my home - I've spent a lot of time since then mulling over how that pushy, unlikely oracle managed to see something coming that me and my friends completely missed.
I believe that Toronto's relatively early adoption of reactionism should be understood in the context of our amalgamation, which consolidated surrounding municipalities into one city in 1998. By forcing suburban and urban interests into more direct competition for resources, this likely explains why our elite versus everyman backlash was pushed forward a bit, compared to the rest of the world.
Rob Ford railed against the "downtown elites”, purporting to be an everyman, though he was actually quite a rich man (with inherited wealth from his family's successful label-making business, and inherited political clout from his father's tenure as a Member of Provincial Parliament).
Much was made about how his supporters felt culturally threatened by these elites, but it's often comparatively underplayed that they also simply resented their tax dollars being spent on any perceived extravagances they didn't directly benefit from themselves.
He vowed to end the “war on cars” (because urban initiatives that prioritized pedestrians and cyclists over drivers frustrated suburbanites who simply wanted to get in and out of the city quickly). He promised to deliver “subways, subways, subways” (especially in suburban areas, despite a greater need in the downtown core, and as an alternative to streetcars, which, again, were loathed for getting in the way of a swift exit for suburban drivers).
He had more than enough to eat at home (maybe don’t click that).
He smoked crack with the people, which is probably what anyone outside of Canada will best remember him for. He messed up way more than he made right in our city, including pushing us to elect a very bland man to succeed him for far too long, accomplishing nothing, because at least he wasn’t embarrassing us (until he did).
Neither our subways nor our roads, in either the “inner suburbs” or downtown, are any better off. The infrastructure we do have is crumbling - a testament to a series of missteps and neglected opportunities, which, in my view, were fundamentally and intractably worsened by Rob Ford's bumbling tenure, compounded by our collective reaction to it.
But his legacy was also a precursor to other blond, unkempt phenomenon to come. They did not, as far as I know, quite so literally smoke crack with their constituents - but they did, in a metaphorical sense, get high on that same supply.
And arguably - so did I, in the way it activated me and the rest of my stunned left-leaning compatriots.
I railed against Ford’s every embarrassing move the whole time he was in office, in person and online. I lamented that he had international news paying attention to us (which never seems to happen, but for when we do something crazy). I found myself paying more attention to municipal politics and protocols than I ever had before, or have since.
Not long after he finally withdrew from the 2014 mayoral race due to scandal and a cancer diagnosis - resulting in his brother Doug's decisive defeat in his stead to the aforementioned bland man - similar upheavals began emerging globally, leaving me just as shocked.
The Brexit referendum soon exposed similar divisions within the UK, amplifying political and cultural rifts between urban and rural areas and championed by similarly privileged yet crass, bombastic personalities. I was surprised to see an entire nation fall for the same hokey, populist schtick.
Then when Trump got elected, I felt almost existential, even though I’m not American. Is this really where we are going, I thought? Why is everyone so oddly enamored with affluent, entitled yet unpolished caricatures?
I railed against him too, joining the progressive chorus in propagating apocalyptic memes of signs saying “but her emails” floating in the flooded ruins of the world. I felt it was important not to let one single violation of our hard-fought liberal norms go.
I also started to feel a bit smug that we had moved past our own ostentatious agent of upheaval. I never really liked Trudeau, and I never voted for him - but I did think, at the time, he was probably better than the blond bulldozers of political decorum. I was relieved it wasn’t happening here (anymore).
Since then, we have elected Rob’s brother Doug as the Premier of our province, here in Ontario. Meanwhile, Trudeau has proven to be diametrically opposed to maintaining our standards across Canada.
I’ve railed against them all, but I’ve long since stopped being surprised by any of this.
Once again, Canada may prove to be a bit ahead of the curve on populism, with the looming possibility of electing Pierre Poilievre. This seems increasingly likely as people grow more dissatisfied with the current government's handling of housing and economic issues, perceiving Poilievre as offering better solutions or advocacy in these areas.
In this way, to me, he embodies the next stage of populism - shifting from the everyman archetype to a more polished middleman avatar.
While no longer surprised by such phenomena, I remain perplexed that our so-called elites have yet to figure out why this keeps happening. Despite the evolving nature of populism represented by figures like Poilievre, it seems that many in positions of power remain unable to adapt.
I didn’t get it at first, either - but I was in my twenties at the time and hadn’t experienced it before. How are much older people, in much more important positions than me, seemingly unable to keep up?
Looking back, I realized I didn't care much about politics before Ford's era because my life was rather cushy. That’s why my initial instinct was to dismiss those who shook up politics as clueless, not understanding what this would mean in a broader sense.
Things were going great! Why would anyone want to disrupt such a comfy status quo?
While in some ways, I still believe that was, and is, true - I've since realized that I was also overlooking significant context at that time.
I’ve come to understand this as we all have become less comfortable.
In my earlier railing days, I guess it hadn't quite dawned on me yet that people often cast their votes not because of their convictions, but simply because they're unhappy with the way things are going.
This now makes me feel pretty clueless, as if it should have been obvious. I mean, did I somehow manage to learn all about how bread - or the lack of it, or the need to line up for it - can start revolutions, yet not fully grasp what this truly meant?
And yet, many of our leaders still fail to truly grasp this concept. They're stuck in the mindset that it's all about pandering to what people want to hear, instead of actually delivering what they truly need.
The first wave of populists was the lashing out of those who identify themselves as “folks,” or among the “everyman” - or at least, those who identify with the sensibilities of the everyman, whether they can truly be counted among them or not.
Too many in power continue to fail to recognize that while a lot of what they said was silly and wouldn’t actually make anything better, the general feeling of decline they emerged from was not.
Like I mentioned earlier, I think the more nascent wave involves people with more middle-class sensibilities, because the sense of decline has now worked its way up, both socially and economically.
Complaints have moved past subpar transit options and services to even those with upper-middle-class salaries struggling to afford housing - be it urban, suburban, or exurban.
Poilievre is often seen as a YouTube phenomenon, or more broadly, a beast of the online right-wing - but I think he is better understood as a manifestation of wider middle-class frustration.
He is simply using the tools and rhetoric of his class - and our current federal government is misunderstanding these means of expression to be the problem, leading to increased efforts to debunk or clamp down on their use.
But the real problem lies in the fact that while populists often acknowledge such quality of life issues rather quickly, more established leaders too often initially deny or downplay them.
I suspect it was generally the everyman who first noticed a subtle, slow decline in their quality of life, with the first wave of populists recognizing their discomfort with this as an opportunity for their own gain.
The next wave may be emerging from a similar impulse, but they are probably less likely to feel disenfranchised enough (just yet) to accept being exploited to the same extent. These are people who absolutely expected to succeed and for certain benefits to come their way. That's why they are so frustrated at being unable to achieve what they anticipated.
This second wave is younger, comprising largely what should have been the secure middle class, had their prospects not been diminishing. Perhaps it includes people much like that kid I encountered on the Danforth, now all grown up, who has found he can't afford to live in the suburb whose sensibilities he once defended (unless he's still in his parents' basement).
This reflects a generational shift in populism - from Boomers who viewed taxes not directly benefiting them as excessive, to their children now experiencing a diminished quality of life as a result of these failures.
The solution, as we should have learned from the first wave, isn't about discrediting their viewpoints but addressing the root causes of their discontent. We need to fix the underlying problems and improve overall quality of life, for all of our sakes.
This is not to say that you have to echo back exactly what people want to hear, or provide precisely what they demand. However, engaging directly with their concerns is crucial. Even if these concerns are expressed imperfectly, they often point to deeper, valid issues.
In our more innocent days of unrest, for instance, addressing suburban Toronto's concerns didn't have to mean halting progress in the city. A smarter, more responsive approach could have involved rethinking the allocation of city resources to better align with the real, on-the-ground needs of all residents, whether they navigate the city by bus, car, truck, bike, or on foot.
Both Rob Ford and the collective response to his tenure became too engrossed in societal and cultural debates, losing sight of the broader sentiments that propelled his election.
Suburbanites likely wouldn’t have opposed more urban development quite so strongly, if they hadn’t perceived their own services and commutes deteriorating quite so much.
When everyone enjoys a higher standard of living, envy or resentment towards those who enjoy more exclusive benefits decreases.
It's essential to recognize that populism's appeal, by definition, stems from its popularity. As it gains traction across wider income and education levels, dismissing its supporters as uninformed or misguided not only misses the point, but will also become more difficult.
A growing number of people now have both the tools and the knowledge to more effectively challenge the “elites”', largely because they expected to be among them.
This makes it even more clear (than it already should have been) that people are drawn to populism not simply out of ignorance, but because it acknowledges the issues they face in a language that speaks to them. Whether it's the rhetoric of a Ford or a Poilievre, the underlying phenomenon remains the same.
There was a time when I believed the demographic shift towards more Millennials than Boomers in Canada might lead us towards electing the NDP. Now, it seems we may instead hand the Conservatives a massive majority.
I think this is partly because too many of our current leaders are Boomers, or Gen Xers with Boomer-like comfort levels. Like me, long ago - they just don't yet understand our decline viscerally, as neither they nor anyone around them is actually experiencing it.
Conservatives are gaining the ability to address declining comfort levels more convincingly as they add more Millennials among their ranks, with much closer personal proximity to the problem.
I also think that too many politicians (especially our federal Liberals), with their increased focus on minute, detailed, data-driven microtargeting of ever-specific population segments, have forgotten the importance of actually talking to real people, instead of just looking at demographic profiles, and actually listening to what they have to say.
To be very clear, I believe this is more of a discredit to those currently in charge, rather than intended as credit to those looking to replace them. And I also don’t think it’s about left versus right. A similar frustration is unfolding in other countries, like the UK, where their Conservatives, after leading for too long without delivering on their promises, face a similar backlash.
Likewise, our Conservatives risk misinterpreting a largely economic mandate as an endorsement for a socially conservative shift that simply isn't there.
Ultimately, people simply want a decent life. Whenever current leadership fails to deliver this, people become more susceptible to those who promise radical change - from any and all sides, no matter how vague or unrealistic those promises might be.
Recognizing what people truly need doesn't mean agreeing with every populist sentiment expressed due to its absence. It's about understanding and addressing the genuine needs underlying those sentiments. Listening and responding to these needs is crucial. Otherwise, people will inevitably turn to those who do - or at least, to those who convincingly claim they will.