With a string of anti-establishment leaders and parties emerging across the world, most agree that we are living a populist moment. While the particularities of populist forces depend on the national context in which they are mobilized, much of contemporary global populism appeals to a combination of anti-elitist and nativist arguments.

This presentation examines whether this is true in Canada. Drawing on a mixed-method analysis of conservative party and activist politics, I argue that rather than being centered on ethnonational populism, Canadian populist discourse has been shaped by its own unique national debates and colonial legacy. In particular, I examine two increasingly salient sites of conservative populism in Canada: Western regionalist populism and penal populism.