Well, from an American perspective maybe, but in most of europe no. Don’t know how that matches Canada but liberal conservatives are center-right. As
@Lucky Luke pointed out once to much dismay of some, the US has from our prespective 2 right wing parties - and most of our european and australian right-ish wings (aside from far right) would be considered pretty left in the US. Liberal conservaties are usually not socially conservative. Merkel was a liberal conservative. They have a large overlap with the not-so-backward center right ‘christian democrats’ (now there’s an oxymoron) and tend to form coalitions with social democrats, or pretty much anything close on their left (cause there’s little but far right and/or very conservative christians on their right). The leading party for the past 13 years thus our forever-PM in NL are also liberal conservatives.
In Finland, the ruling social democrats lost, they’re considered to be liberal and left. The liberal conservatives, however, won, far right in second. The latter could probably be excluded entirely but that’s often not how it works when a party makes significant gains.
The challenge many countries in a similar situation are facing is that by excluding far-right the center-right is forced to form coalitions with the left. While the left is getting… lefter, the far right is softening its tone. See Italy’s ‘former’ fascist party PM, Le Pen‘s daughter in France (making gains now that Macron killed any chances for a new term), ‘former’ neo-nazi in Sweden. Many populistic far right parties in europe are in fact left af, borderline or full socialists, on many issues. Or pretend to be… basically they’re nationalistic socialists... and nazis truly are on the rise.
The situation in Finland is very similar to Sweden’s elections last year, where the coalition now relies on the former neonazi party instead of tipping to the left.
I’m a liberal social democratic republican by the way… also progressive right
None of them are mutually exclusive when your spectrum actually goes from far left to far right and you’re in a constitutional monarchy.