I think the article confuses "austerity" with lack of social programs. Canada has a huge safety net compared to the US:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_programs_in_Canada

Essentially all the "warning conditions" that come out of austerity are also require a serious lack of safety net. Lack of savings, difficulty of childcare and healthcare, etc.

I think ya'll should count yourselves very very lucky America became such a prolific visible rake stepper.

There were scary scary things abrew, a rapid falling sentiment, festering under the all-too-common Fear Uncertainty and Doubt antagonist politics that is the hallmark of the the conservatism to fascism pipeline.

I'm definitely applying some recency bias here, am not super atuned to the historical zeitgeist of the Canadian people. But there has been, over the years, a lot of strongmen esque not good things. And it seems like last year's election really avoided a very perilous further drop to madness by seeing what all a couple months of madness across the border looked like. Page with some polling numbers, brief in rundown, thar is at least directionally correct: https://www.statista.com/chart/amp/34363/polling-average-can...

But it would be nice to have some retellings of Canada's austerity & how that affected the people over the past two three decades! For sure!

Fascism rise is also associated with perceived inequality rising. So if Canada didn't have a class of folks profiting immensely while others were hit, less fascism.