Is there a Tea Party brewing in Canada?

Some time ago Walt wondered if a Tea Party movement wouldn't be a good thing for Canada. Apparently some Canadians have been thinking along the same lines. You'll find them at that great Canadian institution -- Tim Hortons!

Just drop in at your local Tim's -- you'll find them in the northeastern USA too, even in NYC -- and eavesdrop on the conversations about the issues of the day: immigration; foolish government spending; health care; multiculturalism.... You'll hear a lot of those supposedly mild-mannered and middle-of-the-road Canadians saying things that would embarrass even the handful of red Tories in Steve Harpoon's government.

Politicians are listening! On his bus ride across Canada this summer Count Michael Ignatieff made it a point to stop nearly every day and be photographed holding a Tim Hortons cup. (The cup is full of tea though; no coffee addict he!)

And a year ago Call Me Steve skipped a United Nations assembly meeting in favour of a photo-op at a Tim Hortons in a suburb of Toronto, welcoming the doughnut chain back as a Canadian public company. (Steve's no coffee drinker either; he quaffed hot chocolate.)

Why this sudden interest in "the Tim Hortons nation"? According to Susan Delacourt, writing in the Toronto Star, it's because Harper and Ignatieff "really like the eople who drink Tim Hortons coffee. They want their votes and their affection." Of course!

Ms Delacourt's article quotes the head of an Ottawa think tank as saying "In terms of the politics of symbolism, clearly the Tim Hortons connection symbolizes being in touch with ordinary people, drinking what they drink. It's not the place where anyone knows the price of arugula."

So, she says, the USA has its Tea Party movement, and Canada has its Tim Hortons. "What's bubbling in the political kettle here, so to speak, is populism, of two very different but related sorts."

Just so, and the difference has to do with the temperament of the people. Americans are much more inclined than Canadians to take to the streets and wave placards. Canadians don't like to do that, especially when it's cold outside. They just sit in Tim's, sip their coffee and complain to each other. (Walt wonders if the national bird of Canada shouldn't be the grouse!)

But Canadians do vote, although in recent years they do so in declining numbers. Probably they feel that voting doesn't matter because there's no real alternative to the centre-right Tories or the centre-left Liberals.

As CNN pointed out a few weeks ago, there was, in the 1980s, a more conversative option, the Reform Party. But the Reform got co-opted by the red (or paler blue) Tories who valued winning more than ideology.

However, new movements and new parties keep springing up. There's the Wild Rose Party in Alberta -- Reform redux -- and there are stirrings even in Ontario and Québec. There's bound to be an election sometime between now and 2012. Let's see if the simmering discontent with the mainstream Canadian parties comes to a boil.