The News
TORONTO — The good news for Democrats: Somebody has figured out how to defeat the populist right and build a progressive governing majority.
The bad news: He did all that in Canada.
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s electoral success has intrigued American and European progressives, who gathered at Toronto’s Royal York Hotel this past weekend to hear success stories from Canada and warnings from everywhere else.
The annual gathering, organized by the Center for American Progress and the progressive think tank Canada 2020, featured bilateral meetings and a closed-press session with former President Barack Obama. It included a warning to the international left from Carney, who won in 2025 and then convinced members of the opposition to switch parties by abandoning some left-wing climate policies and pivoting to economic growth.
“Those whose politics are to destroy, to demolish or dismantle — they’re not going to change their instincts,” Carney told the Global Progress Action summit. “The loss of control that people feel, that feeds our age of anxiety — it can only be answered, only be answered, by positive action.”
Conference attendees celebrated last month’s defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary as proof that the populist right can be beaten, as well as a disaster for the global conservative nationalism that Orban had helped fund and organize. But in their own countries, liberals acknowledged watching voters drift away from them toward right-wing parties that promised to smash old systems, halt immigration, and quickly restore national greatness.
“The average American is going to struggle to care about climate change if they can’t figure out how to pay their rent,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., told Semafor. “The most important thing is delivery of services and governance to people. The environmental movement, in general, needs to adjust, and say: ‘We can’t just be about stopping things.’”
Neera Tanden, the president of CAP and director of the Biden White House’s domestic policy council, said attendees “are learning from our example that it’s important for progressives to deliver on results as soon as possible.”
Democrats had tied their hands with “permitting challenges or land use issues,” Tanden acknowledged, before handing the country over to Donald Trump, who scrapped many of their ambitious investment plans before voters got to see the results.
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There were plenty of shared stories at the conference of progressives’ struggles against nationalist parties that had gained ground with the younger and working class voters whom they used to count on. It unfolded as another would-be model for progressive governance — the UK Labour Party, which came into power in a 2024 landslide — got demolished in local elections by newer parties of the far right and far left.
“Progressives are in the ‘prove it’ business now,” said Evan Solomon, Canada’s minister for AI and digital transformation.
Their challenge, he added, was winning “people who are disenfranchised and turning to populist right-wing movements, because they think when they ask us for something, they get a lecture, not an affordable house. They get a lecture, not good service at the hospital.”
Conference attendees were optimistic about Democratic chances in the US’ November midterms, thanks to the unpopularity of the Trump administration. The non-Americans in Toronto saw their own opportunities: Building out more energy infrastructure, raising wages, and making trade deals without the US to safeguard against whatever Trump might do.
“When there is a retreat towards protectionism by the United States, we need to ensure we’re de-risking,” said Anita Anand, Canada’s foreign minister. “And we do that by trade diversification.”
Carney, who took over the Liberal Party when it badly trailed in polls, had defeated Canada’s Conservative Party with a patriotic campaign, benefiting from Trump’s tariffs and annexation talk. He’d scrapped a consumer climate tax and electric vehicle mandate and announced funds for new and faster home-building, which sounded good to attendees.
Attendees also identified models beyond Canada when it comes to showing progressivism can deliver tangible benefits, and fast.
Tanden nodded enthusiastically when Diana Alarcon, a former advisor to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, described her “delivering the keys” to the people moving into government-built housing.
And Pete Buttigieg, the other Democrat at the conference seen as a potential presidential candidate, suggested that Democrats bring up “clean bills” on “higher wages,” “universal health insurance coverage,” and paid leave for families.
“It might not be so bad that that needs to happen on new terms,” Buttigieg said of American leadership, “where there is a kind of a flying formation, where we hope America continues to hold and turn a leading position, but one where it makes sense for different players to be aligned with us.”
Room for Disagreement
The element of Carney’s successful pitch that rang harshest for American progressives at the conference wasn’t building more oil and gas pipelines — it was leaving the US out of new trade deals.
Slotkin, author of legislation that would ban Chinese-made electric vehicles in the US, told Semafor that the cars now coming to Canada were a “driving surveillance package” and a “national security risk.”
Onstage, she warned that the Midwest got the “ass end” of the US’ economic opening with China.
David’s view
Democrats still lack a single answer for why the Biden presidency shredded their image. The one Carney offers is populist and to the right of Biden.
It’s particularly compelling for Slotkin and Buttigieg. They represent the unsentimental center-left wing of their party that can’t worry about restoring pre-Trump norms or policies.
Neither passes muster with the left on foreign policy, since neither has charged Israel with “genocide” in Gaza. They are more aligned with the pro-growth wing of the party, which sees an opportunity in the Iran war: Voters now perceive that foreign entanglements have distracted Trump from delivering on economic growth or affordability.
While Buttigieg mused about two very progressive goals — a constitutional amendment to clarify that “a corporation is not a person” and expanding the Supreme Court — both also displayed some Canada envy. Buttigieg and Slotkin clearly like Carney’s ability to move quickly and convince voters that his government was working for them.
Notable
- Progressive leaders from around the world met last month in Barcelona, where Spain’s socialist government is seen as another, more left-wing model of beating back right-wing populism.