By Canadian standards, Stephen Harper was impeccably right-wing; he sympathized with social conservatives, aggressively pursued Canada’s interests in fossil fuels, and appeared to prefer hard to soft power. For all that, his government never reached the kind of level that we are seeing in the US today: he never tried to “repeal and replace” the Canadian health care system; he never took an ax to the welfare state; and he never denied climate change, at least to my knowledge.
In short, American “conservatives” are different, even from their erstwhile allies elsewhere on the same continent. Why?
I think there are three basic reasons:
1. The US was created as an act of rebellion against the British state; the Canadian nation was not. As a result, we have more small government DNA than the Canadians do.
2. There is no Canadian equivalent of Fox News. Canadians do not have to deal with “alternative facts.”
3. Right-wing religious beliefs are more of a factor in the US. No elaboration is necessary.