They navigated the shoals of Quebec separatism, and brought home a Constitution with a Charter of Rights and Freedoms that is an example to the world. Most importantly, they promoted an open-door immigration policy. The result is the world's first post-national state: the urban, polyglot, intensely creative country that we live in, and celebrate, today. But one of the dangers of any consensus is that reality can evolve out from underneath it.
When shared belief parts company with facts on the ground, inevitably there is confusion, even a sense of anger and betrayal. We see this in the way the Laurentian elites react to the Harper government: They don't simply oppose this prime minister — they consider him illegitimate. For much of this country's history, the federal government has looked upon the Western provinces as semi-colonial possessions. But in recent decades, the West has profoundly changed.
The oil sands, the rise of China and other Pacific and Asian tigers, shifting economic ties, shifting patterns of immigration and interprovincial migration have made all four Western provinces more affluent and more Pacific-oriented. The Laurentian elites never really understood the importance of these shifts, and the Liberal Party, which most closely reflected the Laurentian world view, preferred to concentrate on winning votes in Central Canada with a message of protecting the environment and advancing social programs through modestly higher taxes.
But on May 2, stressed voters opted for the Western-based Conservative message of lower taxes, law and order, and jobs, jobs, jobs. Immigrant Canadians, mostly of Asian background, along with other middle-class suburban, exurban and rural Ontario voters, allied themselves with Western Canada, forging a new Pacific-centric conservative coalition — shattering, in the process, the political influence of the Laurentian consensus.
Excluded from power, the Laurentian elites rage against this new normal, fearing that the Conservatives are about to dismantle everything they have achieved. They aren't. Citizens in Edmonton are no less committed than citizens in Toronto to preserving a universal public health-care system. Result: Conservative gain from Liberals. Brampton-Springdale Immigrant population: 47 percent.
Bramalea-Gore-Malton Immigrant population: 53 percent. Mississauga Streetsville Immigrant population: 46 percent. Ajax-Pickering Immigrant population: 31 percent. Result; Conservative gain from Liberals. I do not think we need to wait for the Election Survey results to figure out where the immigrant vote went.
In summary, on May 2 immigrant Canadians, mostly of Asian background, along with other middle-class suburban, exurban and rural Ontario voters allied themselves with voters in Western Canada, forging a new Conservative coalition—shattering, in the process, the political voice of the Laurentian Consensus, the Liberal Party.
So what is this new Conservative coalition? And who is it? To explain it fully would require a whole other essay. But we can offer this preliminary assessment.
It is a coalition, not a consensus. The bonds between the Mississauga commuter, the Prairie farmer and the Okanagan vintner are too ephemeral at this point for us to describe them as one people with one world view. So a coalition, for now. In that coalition you will find commuters from Mississauga and Surrey, Saskatchewan wheat farmers and Ontario dairy farmers; vintners in both the Okanagan and Prince Edward county. You will fine petro-business executives, Filipina nannies and embattled auto workers.
The coalition embraces retirees in Victoria and those daring souls who play the Vancouver real estate market, forestry workers in the B. Excluded from this coalition are cultural elites of downtown Toronto. Margaret Atwood is not part of the Conservative Coalition. There are few, if any, leaders of the Conservative Coalition to be found having lunch at the Rideau Club.
The Toronto Star is not part of the Western consensus. Nor is the CBC. As for The Globe and Mail , well, it depends on the byline. The labour movement is not at the table, or anyone who feels sympathy for the Occupy Movement.
Anyone who believes that income inequality is a pressing concern is outside the coalition. Anyone who believes global warming should be a top government priority is outside the coalition. Since at least the s, the dominant debate within Confederation has been how to accommodate Quebec. That debate informed the Constitutional negotiations and led to two failed accords, Meech and Charlottetown.
It brought the country to the very brink, during the two referendums on separation. It led to the Clarity Act and the Supreme Court reference. Today, Quebec is far less central to the national agenda.
The Conservative Coalition does not include Quebec and the Harper government has discovered it does not need Quebec. The West has replaced Quebec as the n in the equation Ontario plus n equals a majority government.
This has not left the Conservatives hostile to Quebec. This year alone we have witnessed the accord on HST and funding for a new Montreal bridge, both of which came after the election. But it has left the Conservatives and many other Canadians outside Quebec unwilling to accord that province centre stage in the national opera of our politics.
The Laurentian Consensus has recently settled on the idea that unilingual judges should not sit on the Supreme Court. This year the Conservatives appointed a unilingual English judge to the Supreme Court, and threw in a unilingual auditor general for good measure. These appointments took up many hours of debate in the House of Commons, in the Quebec media and in the pages of newspapers such as my own. But I will wager the rest of the country shrugged, and I doubt that there are many who would take me up on that wager.
Even Quebeckers seem to be getting tired of the debate about Quebec. Regardless, Quebec voters have consistently voted for opposition parties now for almost 20 years. For better or worse, the province now appears to be permanently outside the governing consensus, regardless of who that government is.
Whatever the referendums might have said, Quebeckers appears content to pursue a separate, if complementary, destiny. It would seem both sides prefer it that way. Excluded from power, excluded even from dominating the debate, the Laurentian elites rage against this new normal. They fear that the Conservatives are about to dismantle everything that they achieved. No they are not.
Citizens in Regina are no less committed than citizens in Quebec City to preserving a universal public healthcare system. Voters in both Windsor and Kelowna believe in a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians. Support for the Libya mission was as robust in Edmonton as it was in Halifax. Conservatives as well as Liberals believe daycare and early childhood education are good things, although they disagree about how to achieve them. People in Vancouver as well as Toronto accept that one of the roles of government is to redistribute some wealth vertically, between upper- and lower-income individuals, and horizontally, between richer and poorer regions.
Most important, the Conservative Coalition accepts, perhaps reluctantly, that the country is largely of one mind on gay marriage, the right to abortion and the prohibition of capital punishment.
Whatever many small-C and large-C Conservatives may believe in their hearts, they know where the country is; they know the country has moved on. But that does not mean there are no differences between the old guard and the new. There are, and some of these differences are profound. In economic policy, the Conservative Coalition believes that low taxes are good and lower taxes are better.
Business regulation should be minimal. Environmental regulation, to the extent any is absolutely necessary, must conform to American standards and not place Canadian businesses at a competitive disadvantage. On foreign policy, this government emphasizes stalwart support for Israel and closer economic and security ties with the United States.
It favours bilateral trade agreements over international accords such as the Doha round of the World Trade Organization negotiations. It believes the military is a tool of foreign policy and should be as robust as finances permit.
The omnibus crime bill, for example, toughens bail and parole conditions notwithstanding the overwhelming evidence that crime rates are going down and that putting people in jail longer makes it more likely they will commit another crime. The Conservatives embrace the legislation not because the facts warrant these changes, but because the population supports them.
Nothing baffles, or angers, those within the Laurentian Consensus more than this bull-headed rejection of facts in favour of populist pandering. Yes it should. But in some cases, central Canadian elites fail to distinguish between reason versus belief, on the one hand, and conflicting beliefs, on the other.
If you believe the state should acquire as much information as it needs to efficiently allocate priorities, then you support the mandatory long-form census. If you believe the underpinning of democracy is a limited state, and that government must therefore be preventing from infringing personal liberties any more than is absolutely necessary, then you oppose a mandatory census.
If you believe that a primary function of incarceration is to rehabilitate, you loathe the Tory crime bills. If you believe we send people to jail to punish them for crimes, then you believe crime statistics are beside the point. If you believe that cultural industries need protection to prevent American influence from overwhelming the national identity, then you support the CBC.
You especially wonder why the CBC, for all its virtues—and they are formidable—appears incapable of expressing any vision of this country other than the Laurentian consensual one.
Walter Russell Mead, who teaches foreign affairs and humanities at Bard College, describes society as an inverted pyramid with a gyroscope whirling across its surface. At the three edges are religion, nationalism and reason. Obviously, you do not want the gyroscope to spin too close to the edges of religion or nationalism; we have seen what can happen when either of those two forces exercise too much influence over a society.
But Mead points out that a society in which reason dominates too heavily can also come a cropper. For we are each of us a great jumble of values, beliefs and intuitions, too often bending the facts to fit our world view and then declaring our conclusions to be the only ones that are reasonable. My reasoning is your belief is his prejudice. Which is simply to say that those who believe the great dichotomy between the Laurentian Consensus and the Conservative Coalition is that the former descends from the Enlightenment, while the latter originated in shamanistic rituals of nomadic invaders, should think again.
We are all masses of prejudice, we are all creatures of passion, we all twist the facts to suit our predispositions and then call that truth. If you are upset with the Conservatives, ask yourself: Am I upset because I am smart and they are stupid, and the stupid are in charge? Do I truly reason from facts while they feed on base instincts? Is this simply a question of right versus wrong?
Or has it something to do with the fact that my view, my city, the consensus to which I belong, is in eclipse? If the Laurentian Consensus truly is in eclipse, then will the new Conservative Coalition one day achieve such power and stability that it forms a consensus of its own? I do not know. This new Conservative Coalition may be held together only by the will to power and the political acumen of Stephen Harper.
If so, it must one day implode. After all, governments are ultimately defeated and this one will be, too. But this coalition reflects a powerful new demographic and political reality that must be taken into account. The West wanted in. It is in. In fact, it is in charge. A new political reality confronts us: There are now too many people and there is too much money in the West for it to be ignored. Just as no party could once have expected to form a majority government without sufficient support in Quebec, today a majority government depends on support west of Lake of the Woods.
The values and priorities of the West are now national priorities. This is permanent. There is, I believe, something else emerging within the national fabric that we have not confronted before: patriotism. The very word sends shudders through the Laurentian elite. It smacks of jingoism, of Yankee flag waving, of irrational and dangerous passions. Yet it is a force, at least within English Canada, and the Conservative Coalition has embraced it.
We see it in the broad support for rebuilding the Canadian Forces. We see it along the Highway of Heroes. It may be that young Canadians, new Canadians, Western Canadians and Canadians everywhere who take pride in the accomplishments of this prosperous, successful, tolerant country are ready to slough off the ancient animosities that have dragged us down for so many years: the regional grievances, the historic resentments, the lament of the victim. As Quebec recedes from the centre stage of the national debate, perhaps that too strengthens a new national notion of self.
For the Quebec question was always a question of what was wrong with the country. But from the national finances, to our banking system, to our cultural exports, to the fantastic pluralism of our cities, increasingly today we focus on what is right with Canada. Canada today feels good about itself and wants to talk about it. Assembly of First Nations. As an Indigenous leader from British Columbia, she was three time zones and a world removed from the Laurentian elites. This may be why Mr.
Trudeau and his advisers were so unsuccessful in making Ms. And it may be why they were unable to predict her actions after she was removed as attorney-general. They assumed she was a politician, a Liberal, and someone who understood that Canada was governed from the centre. But she is not a politician — at least not a conventional one — she is a Liberal by convenience, and she has no particular attachment to the centre.
She is, however, a former Crown attorney devoted to protecting the rule of law, a British Columbian and an Indigenous woman who I suspect took offence to all these Laurentian men trying to make her see things their way. Besides, what was SNC-Lavalin to her? What is it to anyone in the West? Why did the Liberals buy the Trans Mountain pipeline and then not fight more aggressively in the courts and in the court of public opinion for the right to twin the line?
Why are shovels not in the ground now that the National Energy Board has, yet again, approved the project? And why bring in new legislation, Bill C, that could make it virtually impossible to get any new energy project approved? When he was younger, Mr. Trudeau studied and lived in B.
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