When Donald Trump got elected, Canada thought it would never happen here. Then it kinda did. And it might happen again next year. There’s no high and mighty in politics anymore—around the world leaders who are shattering political norms are winning leadership votes and election, and the traditional political system doesn’t know what to make of them, and their rivals don’t know how to fight back.
This is the politics of chaos. When you throw out the unwritten rules that have governed political behaviours in countries like Canada, what are you left with? Not enough to hold down a leader who doesn’t think traditional norms apply to them. And what comes after that is anyone’s guess—but it’s a future we need to prepare for. Justin Ling, who wrote immediately after Doug Ford’s election that he would govern just as he’d campaigned, digs into where the chaos came from, and if it’s possible for us to ever return to the normal politics we once took for granted.