Happy Canada Day

GUEST BLOG BY TOM BEREND, SQE BOARD MEMBER AND READING TUTOR

To celebrate Canada Day, I've been reading a fascinating book about our great nation: 'The Big Shift' by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson. It describes how the Toronto-Montreal-Ottawa liberal elites have run Canada for the last century, both shaping our public policies and managing the implementation, but suggesting that a New Canada has emerged and our future will be very different. 

In their telling, major national issues like trade and industrial policies, healthcare, equalization, accommodations for Quebec, immigration and cultural policies,  all the 'big ideas' that bind our country, have been charted by what the authors term the 'Laurentian Consensus. The Liberal Party is commonly associated with this worldview, but R.B. Bennett and Brian Mulroney were also members.

That's old news, but the authors claim that this era has now ended due to the huge influx of immigrations - what they call 'The Big Shift'. We have accepted 250,000 new Canadians each year - a new Toronto each decade - and this tsunami has finally tipped the scales. The new majority is in the bustling suburbs around Toronto and Vancouver, they don't listen to the CBC, and they don't care a bit about the Laurentian Consensus and the old élites.

New Canada, the authors claim, has joined cause with the conservatives from Western Canada and rural communities. They want safe streets, jobs, smaller government, and balanced budgets. They believe that government intrusions into the economy do more harm than good, and they are deeply suspicious of unions and environmentalists. It is not that they don't want improved living standards and social equity - they just don't believe that governments can deliver such things.

Bricker is the president of Ipsos Reid Public Affairs, a major pollster, and Ibbitson writes for the Globe and Mail, so as you would expect this book is driven by demographics and polling data sifted through recent new events. It is riveting. I grew up with the Consensus; I have lived in Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, attended élite schools, and reliably voted Liberal for 40 years; it is a mental earthquake to realize how out-of-touch I have become. I can't begin to do justice to this book in a few paragraphs; it will make you look at the world through a different lens, and everyone should read it.

--------------------------------

Bricker and Ibbitson focus on politics at the national level, and this blog is about education under provincial jurisdiction, but we can still apply the authors' lens to our interests. In recent comments Doug laid out ambitious education projects to address transformational goals on poverty, inclusion, and equity consistent with the  Laurentian Consensus:  wrap-around social and health services, more stringent teacher certifications, free tuition, all-day early interventions starting at age two, and so on.
Teachers are the front-line soldiers for the old Consensus, but a look at the faces in their classrooms shows how the world has changed. The new Canadian voting majority is likely dismayed by our educational policies - teaching French, 'equitable' curriculums, not assigning homework, social promotion, and so on. 

In Doug's vision, enhanced education services would be planned and delivered by government employees, paid for by higher taxes, and enforced by shutting down private alternatives.  'The Big Shift' suggests that exactly the opposite will happen.