Canada’s message for local politicians

The defeat of conservative Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper is a telling blow against conservative politics in all Western societies and has substantial policy implications for Australia.

But underlying Canada’s ­essential moderation, the victor, Justin Trudeau, comes from the centre-left Liberal Party, not the more left New Democrats.

If anything, Trudeau the ­celebrity resembles Malcolm Turnbull more than he does Bill Shorten.

Harper was Tony Abbott’s role model and closest analogue among international leaders, just as Harper earlier had greatly admired John Howard.

Canada is severely under-­reported in Australia. A federal system, Commonwealth member, parliamentary democracy and a huge immigration program, of all the nations in the world Canada most closely ­resembles Australia economically, socially and politically.

The decisive issues in the Canadian election were eerily reminiscent of Australia’s politics. The Canadian economy is in a severe slowdown (though not a recession) brought on by the end of the resources boom.

Trudeau promised to end Harper’s social conservatism, muscular foreign policy and to moderate his free market economics. The Liberal leader will raise taxes on high-income ­Canadians but cut them for the middle class. He had a penchant for symbolic issues which played well with Canada’s liberal elites. He wants to reverse the ban on Canadian public servants wearing the niqab at work, calling the choice of what to wear a basic civil right. He plans to legalise marijuana.

The Canadian electorate was moved by sympathy for Syrian refugees and Trudeau plans a greater emphasis on compassion in this policy area.

He plans to take the budget into deficit in order to double spending on infrastructure as a way of stimulating the sluggish economy. He will reverse some social spending cuts and expand the role of the federal government.

Perhaps most significant for Australia, Trudeau plans to find a way to price carbon.

However, Trudeau is smarter than he may appear here. He wants the lead on carbon pricing to be taken by Canada’s provinces in a scheme which seems likely to accommodate a great deal of ­internal variety.

Harper’s electoral eclipse contrasts with the continued success of more socially progressive conservative leaders such as New Zealand’s John Key and Britain’s David Cameron.

This can be overstated, however. Cameron is more conservative now that he has a majority in his own right. And Harper has lost after nearly a decade in office and having won a clear majority in 2011, while in defeat his Conservatives retain a solid base (about 100 seats to the Liberals’ more than 180) from which to launch a fresh bid for power next time.

Abbott’s closest advisers in ­office saw the Abbott-Harper axis as representing a crucial policy ­alliance in Western politics. Nowhere was this clearer than in their common opposition to emissions trading schemes.

Several times in interviews Harper’s long-term foreign minister, John Baird, told me that ­Canada would never embrace a national ETS. This, along with the US shunning a national ETS, gave Abbott’s position added respectability.

Harper was also, like Abbott, a muscular advocate of Western values and decisive foreign policy, including through the deployment of Canadian armed forces in support of the US-led coalition in Iraq and Syria.

Harper and Abbott were the two Western leaders who shared by far the strongest political commitment to Israel. Canada a few years ago famously failed to ­secure a seat on the UN Security Council substantially because ­Ottawa would not compromise its support for Israel.

This element of Canadian policy will diminish, or perhaps disappear, under Trudeau, the son of Pierre Trudeau.

The Trudeaus are Canada’s Kennedys, and although Justin Trudeau is, at 43, young to be prime minister, and inexperienced by the standards of modern leaders, he is the new celebrity leader, with just a hint of the swagger of the Barack Obama eight years ago.

The election of Trudeau also underscores the contrast between Western and Asian politics. Asian conservative leaders, such as Japan’s Shinzo Abe and India’s Narendra Modi, are much more in tune with the Abbott-Harper world view than the more liberal outlook.

Both Abe and Modi, now the senior elected conservative leaders in the world, are socially conservative, pro-business and have a values-based, muscular strategic outlook akin to Harper and ­Abbott.

In Australia it is generally considered a progressive thing to want to integrate with Asia, but it is actually conservatives who most resemble Asian values and outlooks.

Harper’s government, like ­Abbott’s, had run up a string of successful free-trade agreements. Although routinely overshadowed by the US, Canada is a big player on the world stage — economically, politically, strategically and culturally.

Its latest change of direction will have political consequences across the Western world.