The Re-Engineering of Canada Is Finally Over

With the election Monday, the bold right-wing experiment ends and the traditional Canada – a Canada of moderate big-tent governance – is reborn.

The country moved from a Trudeau to a Trudeauphobe and, with this election, back to a Trudeau again. If you go by the number of progressives in Canada, it means that two-thirds of the population get their idea of the country back.

The Trudeauphobe, Stephen Harper, made some big strides in shifting the culture away from its moderate values. He moved the policy yardsticks rightward on foreign policy, on criminal justice, on taxation, the environment, civil liberties and in other domains. No other conservative prime minister had pushed that far. None had Mr. Harper’s driving desire to re-engineer the political culture.