CALGARY– Canadians, it seems, never tire of the endless debate on what it means to be Canadian. Are we liberal, socialist or conservative? Are we more enlightened than our neighbours to the south? Is our identity truly framed by our health-care system? The CBC? The Charter?
The debate was reignited recently with the release of The Big Shift, a book co-written by John Ibbitson, political columnist with the Globe and Mail, and Darrell Bricker, pollster and chief executive officer of Ipsos Global Public Affairs. They argue that the country has undergone a fundamental shift in its values – thanks largely to immigration – from a culture of entitlement and dependency to a more entrepreneurial and right-wing model.
It is dusk for what the authors call the Laurentian elites, the white clique of politicians, editorial writers, financiers and intellectuals who created the paradigm we’ve come to think of as the Canadian national identity. The “Big Shift in power to the West and to suburban immigrants” is permanent, they write, and “will make Canada inexorably a more conservative place.”
Now, as a westerner, I’m OK with the idea of shift of power to the West. As the West has grown in population and economic power, and as central Canada grapples with its Rust Belt economic malaise, it is only right and natural that power transitions to a region of the country that is younger, more innovative and better resourced.
However, as an ex-Ontarian, I also have to take issue with the authors’ city-centric notion that our country ever really collectively bought into the Laurentian consensus. That’s because I, and most of the people I know, were never part of the elite that Ibbitson and Bricker describe.
Instead, I grew up a farm boy in a working-class part of the province. The people I knew were as hard working as anyone I’ve ever met. They believed then – and do now – in community values, and they didn’t count on the state to take care of them. There was no strategy to work four months and then collect pogey for eight. There was no culture of dependency.
It’s important to recognize that, while this sprawling country continues to see political fortunes swing according to the erratic whims of the 416 and 905 belts of Toronto and area, the installation of neither a Liberal nor a Conservative government represents a national consensus. Canadians’ political and social beliefs are complex and nuanced.
We are conservatives with a heart and liberals with a pragmatic side. Even our socialists worry about balancing the books. We don’t want a U.S.-style Democratic/Republican divide in our politics – we like having a third, fourth or even fifth option, because we don’t like being neatly compartmentalized into one extreme or the other.
The elite that Ibbitson and Bricker describe did – and does – exist, and but few people ever had a taste for their sanctimonious value system. Michael Ignatieff was an accomplished academic, but failed miserably as the Liberal leader because he tried to engage in a conversation with an audience that tuned out long ago. Stephen Harper enjoyed surprising success because his party was hungrier, and therefore better attuned, to the new way.
There is a critical point, however, where Ibbitson and Bricker are overreaching in their analysis. They predict that this is the dawn of a new conservative era, as Canadians shift from a perverse form of liberalism that tolerates maritime EI abuse for the sake of national unity. I disagree with the death-of-liberalism conclusion. Rather, this collapse of ’90s-era Liberal rule is a repudiation of paternal elitism – a disease that in its day crossed political and ideological lines.
Voters on the left are as anxious for a new style of leadership as are voters on the right. As I have written several times before, voters crave any politician who offers good government unencumbered by ideology.
It is an exciting time in the Canadian social fabric because there has indeed been a shift. Towards accountability. And more intelligent political discussions. Politicians of the future who use tired old lines and once-successful voter manipulation strategies will find themselves in the dustbin of history. It is that very fate the federal Liberals are desperately trying to avoid.
This revolution is being fuelled by much more than demographics. It is also being fuelled by the powerful new Internet-based tools that have turned once-venerable institutions, from newspapers to the music industry, inside out. As we saw in Egypt, these are tools that can bring governments to their knees.
That is the real Big Shift. And my hope and prayer is the one the day this country will be a better place because of it.
Doug Firby is Editor-in-Chief and National Affairs columnist for Troy Media.
