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.

Only in Massachusetts you say? Pity!

Canadians will understand this headline when they hear news of the shocking outcome of yesterday's election in Massachusetts.

To the astonishment of nearly every and the dismay of Barack Hussein Obama, a little-known Republican state senator, Scott Brown, rode an old pickup truck and a growing sense of unease among independent voters to an extraordinary upset when he was elected to fill Ted Kennedy's old Senate seat.

Mr. Brown defeated the state's attorney-general, Martha Coakley, by a decisive margin. Coakley had been expected to win easily in a traditionally Democratic state, in spite of being more humorless than Hillary Clinton and even more patrician than John Kerry. But she blew it!

To explain the headline to Americans, it is the strapline to an old commercial for a certain brand of tea, available only in Canada. Pity! The Republican victory in Massachusetts, you see, was achieved with the support of a fledgling populist group styling itself the Tea Party!

In a campaign that rang all the right (and I do mean RIGHT) bells with Massachusetts voters, the Tea Party candidates ranted and railed against bailouts, handouts, reckless spending and more taxes. They kept pounding home the theme that the US government has grossly overreached itself and is out of control.

Now I ask my Canadian friends, why haven't you got a party in Canada standing up to say those same things? Don't you think the Canadian government and your provincial governments are guilty of the same profligate spending and egregious attempts to have the government control every aspect of your lives?

A similar message was preached a few years ago by Alberta's Reform movement. But the Reform Party got co-opted into the Conservative Reform Alliance Party (CRAP) and the promise of limited, back-to-basics government vanished like snow after a chinook.

A poll just before the Massachusetts election showed that 58% of Americans supported the principles of the Tea Party. In Massachusetts, the silent majority has spoken at last. When will it happen in Canada?

Click here to read "Tea Party rattles America's educated class".

Footnote: The online edition of the Boston Herald had a better headline: "Scott Brown bags it!"