I am an Immigrant
I am Canadian
I was born in 1951 and in 1954 we moved from the Netherlands to a rural area near Truro, Nova Scotia. At age eighteen, I moved to Alberta where I lived until I retired in Mexico. Meanwhile, STOKDIJK GREENHOUSES became one more immigrant success story.
I do not know Judith Newman but I think I would like her, “fibre artist, getting angrier by the day! A Canadian with elbows up!” She lives in Halifax and has probably eaten Stokdijk tomatoes and cucumbers. Recently she posted a Note on Substack that resonated:
Everybody in Canada, except the First Nations folks, came from somewhere else as immigrants - maybe not they themselves, but their parents, in my case my grandparents, in some families great, great, great grandparents. Nevertheless our families came, worked hard, and made a place for themselves.
Now we want to deny the same possibility to others living in precarious situations.
Worse than that, there are people in Canada who want to make them the scapegoats for the current global chaos which is impacting life in Canada as well as everywhere else in the world.
Judith and I both follow several of the same Substacks. That gives me a strange sense of connection with someone I am unlikely to ever meet. And we both follow Charlie Angus.
The article, How the Hate Card Could Play in Canada, by Charlie Angus is disturbing but not surprising.
A political storm is coming, and it’s going to hit hard. However, I’m not talking about the Washington-based storm. This one is a home-grown tempest, and the dark clouds have been building on the horizon for quite some time… MAPLE MAGA are setting the stage for a political play that has proven devastatingly effective across Europe and the United States. Their target will be to fan fears about immigrants… The extremist “blame the immigrant” strategy is being used to devastating effect in Europe and the United States. And now the polling numbers in Canada are beginning to solidify in disturbing ways.
For me, this is about more than love of country. This is deeply personal. The dark clouds have been building in my close family and in some of my friends for years.
Poilievre is reading the cards very well.
So is Premier Danielle Smith…
Hopefully more and more Canadians will grasp what is happening in America which now serves us as a bad example. Trump has almost completely taken over the Republican party and MAGA in the USA can be understood as a cult. The current situation is well described in an article by Christopher Armitage, Between Democracy and Dictatorship: Where We Are and How Long We Have.
The coup already happened. Leading scholars of democratic backsliding now classify the United States as a competitive authoritarian regime. Steven Levitsky, co-author of “How Democracies Die,” stated in April 2025 that “we are no longer living in a democratic regime.” Multiple scholarly frameworks confirm we crossed the threshold from democracy into authoritarianism’s early stages. The confusion about when it happened doesn’t change that it did.
Fortunately, there has not been a similar coup in Canada. And now it seems that Pierre Poilievre does not have a chokehold on the Conservative Party of Canada. He is facing a leadership review in January and we are now seeing the first signs that he may be challenged. The best case scenario, in my opinion, is a split in the CPC between MAPLE MAGA and the more reasonable traditional conservatives who truly love Canada and understand the threat from below the Canadian border.
The U.S.-based Fox News Channel was formally approved for distribution in Canada by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) in November 2004. Fox News frames immigrant issues in negative ways. These narratives have been amplified by Canadian media on the far right and exploited by some politicians.
I had a look at Canada immigration statistics. The number of immigrants arriving in Canada during 2021 to 2024 set records. The concerns of Canadians that this was too much too fast seems valid.
However, the issue was quickly addressed by Mark Carney.
Mark Carney Wins Canadian Election: What It Means for Immigration
Immigration emerged as a key issue during the campaign, with Canadians increasingly concerned about the pace of population growth and its impact on infrastructure. Carney responded with a vision of sustainable immigration – one that aligns newcomer intake with Canada’s ability to house, employ, and integrate new arrivals.
Pierre Poilievre seems not to have grasped how different Mark Carney is from Justin Trudeau. Hopefully the majority of Canadians will not be taken in by the politics of division and hatred. And with people like Charlie Angus, Canada has a decent chance of remaining an island of sanity in a world going crazy.