*****
This
past Canada Day, I was reflecting on some of the most interesting
trends I’ve noticed over the last couple of years in Canadian
politics. John Ibbitson has written about the collapse of what he
calls the “Laurentian Consensus”, and the subsequent shift of
political power to Western Canada, over and above the old consensus,
based on power in Ontario and Quebec, that governed Canada. As power
shifted west, so too did the electorate’s values, with Quebec on
the outside, or so Ibbitson claimed. (i) At the same time, the Harper government also set about establishing a
new narrative of Canada, one that came in response to the original
narrative supposedly established by the Liberals that centred around
developments that could be attributed to their party. (ii)
While
Ibbitson made several interesting points in his essay, I have to
admit that I’m not entirely convinced by his claims that the old
values are out of date, or that the old assumptions are entirely
gone. Studying Canadian history and the many different viewpoints
that I’ve come across, I’ve come to realize that there is in fact
much more common ground and common values across Canada than most
people seem to realize. Many of us share similar feelings of
alienation, even as we often don’t fully understand where the other
parts of Canada are coming from.
Take,
for instance, the case of John Diefenbaker, the Conservative
firebrand from Saskatchewan who was Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963.
Diefenbaker has been admired by a variety of different groups, for
often varying reasons. Diefenbaker spoke to many Western Canadians
who felt alienated from the corridors of power in Ottawa, even as he
enacted policies that benefited that region. (iii) His legacy has also been invoked by modern Conservatives who describe
him as a “populist Conservative” fighting against an entrenched
Liberal administration, (v) and his invoking of a “Canada of the North”, (iv) both of which the Harper government doubtlessly seeks to invoke with
its criticisms of supposed Liberal elitism and its Arctic sovereignty
initiatives. However, Diefenbaker is also a respected figure in the
Red Tory narrative of Canada for his opposition to closer continental
integration with the United States, which is said to compare
favourably with Stephen Harper’s desire to follow the Americans’
lead on various foreign policy issues. (vi) He was also a remarkably activist prime minister, doing everything
from finding new markets for Western Canadian grain to creating the
National Council on Welfare.
It’s
curious that Diefenbaker could be so respected by two supposedly so
different political traditions. One of the popular ideas today is
that Red Toryism is dead and the ascending Blue Toryism is supposedly
incompatible with it, but you wouldn’t know it looking at
Diefenbaker, who clearly didn’t see anything contradictory in his
actions and policies appealing to both traditions of conservatism.
The supposed demise of Red Toryism is also suspect when we consider
some of its key principles as outlined by Ron Dart, such as the
positive role of government action, support for and respect of the
land and the common good and the positive role religion can play in
the state, also continue to play a role in Canadian conservatism. (vii)
Preston
Manning, one of the leading lights of modern Canadian conservatism,
illustrates some of these tendencies. He has spoke extensively about
the need for “green conservatism” and the necessity of
conservatives to look at environmental issues, (viii) and has also gone on record as supporting putting a price on carbon
and emissions. (ix) Manning is also a religious man who’s written about the positive
role Christianity has played in influencing his views and his growth,
but he has also very specifically noted that this must be
noncoercive. To Manning, true Christianity is distinguished from
spurious Christianity in that the former does not seek to impose
itself or its solutions on people who do not want to receive them. (x)
As
for the common good and the positive role of state action,
Conservative governments have proven themselves to be just as willing
as Liberal or NDP governments to carry out nation- or
province-building projects when they are in the driver’s seat. (xi) Even now, the Harper government has made an extensive effort to
promote its “Economic Action Plan” to Canadians, even as various
Conservative MPs have promoted on their websites the positive actions
the federal government has taken for their constituents. Whether you
believe it comes from political necessity or genuine belief, under
the current government the state can and does continue to play a
positive role in the economy and ensuring the common good. Indeed,
the political writer Richard Clippingdale, himself an adherent of the
Red Tory policies Robert Stanfield espoused, speculates that
Stanfield would have found not only worrying tendencies but
encouraging trends in the new Conservative party, and that a number
of Harper’s policies can be seen to fit into a pattern originally
inspired by Stanfield. (xii)
So,
while Canadian values may have changed to some extent, it’s not
clear that they’ve changed to the extent that John Ibbitson claims
they have. No less a Conservative than Tom Flanagan, the federal
Conservative Party’s former campaign director, stated that the
Liberal consensus lives on, and is simply under new management. (xiii) Certainly, political clout has shifted in Western Canada’s favour,
although even then there’s more common ground between the Western
and Eastern parts of Canada than is often realized. Even my own home
province of Alberta, the province most known for standing up and
protesting federal initiatives and criticizing what Ibbitson refers
to as the Laurentian Consensus, is an example of this.
In
reading Geo Takach’s book Will
The Real Alberta Please Stand Up?, I
was struck by how much many tendencies and traits in Alberta have
reflected those of other parts of Canada. Takach notes that, by and
large, Alberta has a strong sense of being treated as an exploited
hinterland by Central Canadian interests. (xiv) This reflects Canada’s treatment as a whole by Great Britain, which
often treated Canada as simply to be exploited either for resources
or for political favour with the United States. (xv) Although Alberta is the most conservative province in Canada, it also
has a tendency to move back towards the political centre much like
the rest of the country, (xvi) as witnessed by then-Premier Ralph Klein increasing government
spending once again after the provincial books had been balanced,
Preston Manning’s support of green issues typically raised by the
left, or former Premier Ernest Manning’s support of “an
acceptable level of social services that everyone could afford.” (xvii)
And
then there was the positive role government can play in the economy,
as witnessed by government support for the oil and gas industry (xviii), or the more general support many Albertans have expressed for
incentives to have more of the province’s oil and gas refined and
upgraded in Alberta, or at least in Canada, rather than seeing the
raw product shipped to a foreign country. Even the Wildrose Alliance
party, the most right-wing major party running in the 2012 Alberta
election, talked about such policies as developing a natural gas
strategy to create and expand domestic markets for natural gas,
reforming the way electricity is bought and sold in Alberta,
specifically to reduce price spikes for consumers and businesses, (xix) and identifying incentives for the private sector to upgrade and
refine more of Alberta’s bitumen within the province. (xx)
Government
support of the oil and gas industry, as well as the support for
incentives to refine more petrochemical products within Alberta’s
borders despite what market forces might otherwise desire, remind me
of the incentives and other actions taken by Central Canadian
governments to encourage particular economic goals. While Alberta may
differ from the rest of Canada in some substantial ways, in practice
many of the ideas and actions taken by my province are not
necessarily as different from those of other parts of Canada as
Ibbitson seems to imply. As previously noted, the Harper government
is also making an effort to communicate its own support for
particular projects in various parts of the country.
Alberta
voices have long been some of the most strident in speaking for the
concerns of what’s come to be referred to as “Western
alienation”, the sense that the Western provinces were shut out of
a federal status quo led by decision-makers from Ontario and Quebec
who made policy to benefit their regions, often at Western Canada’s
expense. In particular, Quebec was seen as benefiting from federal
attention and largesse, due in part to the efforts of Pierre Trudeau
and later Prime Ministers to fight Quebec separation. Since the
Quebec issue doesn’t seem to be solved, many people have concluded
that the province is apparently just spoiled and that nothing will
satisfy it.
The
truth is that, as with Alberta, there’s much more to the story.
Quebec writer Christian Dufour has noted that many Quebecers also
feel alienated by a federal status quo that doesn’t recognize the
unique situation that Quebec faces in North America, and insists on a
political arrangement that favours the primacy of Anglophone culture,
even as this same status quo prevents the Atlantic and Western parts
of the country from fully participating in Confederation. (xxi) Quebec francophones like Henri Bourassa spoke about describing Canada
as being established by “two founding peoples”, with Quebec
needing particular recognition as the only province in Canada with a
francophone majority. (xxii) Pierre Trudeau obviously opposed this, but according to some critics
in opposing the idea of duality Trudeau ended up supporting
Anglo-American political ideas that didn’t fully recognize the
distinct situation Quebec faced in Canada. (xxiii) Even Stéphane Dion, as Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs in Jean
Chretien’s Cabinet in the 1990s, spoke of the need to recognize his
province as a distinct society in the Constitution. (xxiv) It’s an open question whether such francophone Quebecers would see
themselves as part of Ibbitson’s Laurentian Consensus. More likely,
they would probably feel as alienated from it as many Albertans.
That
said, such debates mask the commonalities francophone Quebecers share
with other Canadians. Federalist writer and politician Claude Ryan
has written in glowing terms about the positive effects of the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms, (xxv) while Alberta commentators have noted that, while the Charter was
ostensibly the outcome of a struggle between Québec politicians,
actually reflects a number of Western Canadian values on human
rights. (xxvi) Even a young Stéphane Dion, in his days as a university professor,
wrote about how the values of francophone Quebecers were becoming
increasingly in line with those of other Canadians, even as
francophone Quebecers made an effort to assert their
distinctiveness. (xxvii)
More
generally, the debates Québec has had over the last 45-50 years
regarding the status of the French language in that province, as well
as how new immigrants should adapt to it, remind me of the criticisms
many English-speaking Canadians have had of multiculturalism and how
it supposedly reinforces differences between new and old Canadians,
when the new arrivals would be better served by assimilating into the
established society. Both the language debates in Quebec and the
broader cultural debates across Canada come from a concern held by
members of the established societies that concern that their cultures
are being undermined by new arrivals that aren’t interested in
conforming to the society they’ve joined and are more concerned
with importing their own values. In that respect, francophone
Quebecers aren’t necessarily that different from other Canadians.
Another tendency I’ve noticed that Western Canadians, Aboriginal peoples, and Quebecers all share is that they’ve all been asked what they “want”. Westerners have been asked this question, (xxx) Aboriginal peoples have been asked it, (xxxi) and Quebec has been asked it. (xxxii) This clearly implies that there’s a lot of mutual misunderstanding in Canada, misunderstanding that obscures a lot of the common ground we as Canadians have.
Aside
from the problem of assuming that the old values are completely
eclipsed, another flaw in Ibbitson’s analysis is his attributing
specific values and accomplishments exclusively to one region, party
or ideology. Support for the military is not an exclusively
conservative virtue, considering that the Liberals under Sir Wilfrid
Laurier created the Canadian Navy in 1910, while the Canadian
military as a whole reached the height of its power and prestige
under the Liberal William Lyon Mackenzie King during World War II.
Fiscal prudence is not an exclusively conservative virtue either,
when one recalls that it was the Chretien Liberals who got rid of the
deficit in the 1990s. Nor is populism, when one recalls Pierre
Trudeau’s efforts to undercut provincial opposition to his
constitutional initiatives in the early 1980s by appealing directly
to the public and trying to forge a broad popular consensus in
support of his actions (xxxiii) or the significant role he played in derailing the Meech Lake and
Charlottetown Accords by arousing popular opposition to them.
On
the other hand, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms has important
Conservative and NDP influences as well, given the inclusion of such
things as the notwithstanding clause and the increased recognition of
resource taxation rights for the provinces, at the insistence of the
Conservative and NDP provincial premiers who eventually agreed to
Pierre Trudeau’s constitutional patriation. Nor are Canadian
Liberals the only ones to embark on nation- or province-building
projects when they are in office, as Canadian Conservatives have been
quite happy to do the same thing when they themselves are in power.
Similarly, it was John Diefenbaker who created the National Council
on Welfare, and created the original Canadian Bill of Rights,
accomplishments that most people today would associate with the
Liberals or the NDP. In short, many of the ideas and evolutions
experienced by Canadian society have cut across regional and party
lines, and do not exclusively belong to any party or part of the
country.
Where
Ibbitson is correct is in noting how demographic and political power
have shifted westward, and how other parts of the country were often
treated by Central Canadian leaders as semi-colonial possessions.
Quite often, these leaders made policy that benefited their own home
provinces, but caused headaches for other parts of Canada. This, as
much as anything, was the root cause of Western alienation and the
sense that the Western provinces weren’t being treated fairly by
the federal government. However, there are signs that now the shoe is
on the other foot-Preston Manning, for one, has expressed his concern
over Eastern alienation, which has replaced the Western alienation
that inspired him to create the Reform party in the first place.
(xxxiv)
Unfair
treatment by the federal government created alienation in Western
Canada, and the perception that Ottawa did not care about the West’s
interests, masking many of the common values that Westerners shared
with their fellow Canadians. Now, however, the West is “in”, and
many of the issues Western Canadians have been raising for years are
finally being dealt with. As a Westerner and an Albertan myself, I’m
very glad these issues have finally received attention that has been,
in many cases, long overdue.
However,
I also share Manning’s concerns about whether we’ve simply
exchanged one set of problems with another. Does the collapse of the
Laurentian Consensus make Aboriginal people or francophone Quebecers
feel any less alienated? Will it mean that issues of importance to
Atlantic Canada, the region whose people now feel they are the
worst-treated by the federal government, (xxxv)
will receive more attention in Ottawa? Is Arctic sovereignty the only
issue that of interest to the Northern territories that will be
addressed? In our rush to promote some of our values and historic
accomplishments that were previously overlooked, are we now letting
others fall by the wayside? And who is to say that the West will not
find itself back on the outside looking in, if power shifts once
again in Ottawa?
The
Laurentian Consensus can be criticized for not paying sufficient
attention to these issues and focusing only on the matters that
personally interested its proponents. However, the major challenge
that we now face, in 21st century Canada, is how we bridge
the gap between all these different perspectives and peoples who are
often alienated and don’t understand one another, despite the
common ground that continues to exist between them.
Too
often it’s easy to stereotype all Albertans as radical
laissez-faire conservatives who don’t care about any other part of
the country, all French Quebecers as entitled bigots who don’t care
about anyone who’s not a “pure laine” of French ancestry, or
all Aboriginals as lazy, entitled and refusing to contribute to
Canada. What this overlooks, however, is why people have often come
to the conclusions they have, and just why they feel alienated
in the first place and why they want the changes they do.
Indeed,
I would like to see all of these perspectives heard, and all of these
accomplishments celebrated in Ottawa. The “Laurentian Consensus”
can be quite rightly criticized for often treating the outer parts of
the country as colonial hinterlands and treating with contempt any
efforts by these outer parts of the country to assert themselves.
It’s great that the West is finally in, and that many of the West’s
biggest frustrations are being addressed, but even if economic and
political power is shifting West we cannot afford to leave other
parts of the country hanging, even if they do not support the
government of the day. This was one of the reasons for the Laurentian
Consensus’s supposed downfall, after all.
Ibbitson
describes the new “Conservative Coalition” that he claims has
replaced the Laurentian Consensus as incorporating everyone from
Saskatchewan wheat farmers to Filipina nannies. Perhaps the final
flaw in Ibbitson’s analysis is his describing such a coalition as
something new in Canada. What’s worth remembering is that the
Laurentian Consensus itself still attracted support from outside
Ontario and Quebec. Even the likes of Pierre Trudeau and Jean
Chretien, at different points, won seats on the Prairies that helped
bolster their majorities. Despite all the problems many of the
Consensus’s policies might have caused for these other parts of
Canada, its proponents had and continue to have support in these
other regions.
More
broadly, Canada itself is a broad coalition of many different groups,
who have often had to make compromises with one another in order to
be able to live together. In turn, they found common ground on a lot
of issues, common ground that enabled them to form a country despite
the very real differences they had in other areas. These differences
continue to exist in Canada today, but so too do the common values
and common ideas that distinguish who we are as a country. While
political and economic power has shifted in Canada, the country
continues to hold many of the same fundamental ideas and face many of
the same fundamental challenges it always has as it enters its 145th
year.
This
article was originally published on IPolitics.ca.
i
John Ibbitson, “The Collapse of the Laurentian Consensus: On the
Westward Shift of Canadian Power-And Values.” Talk originally
given on December 5, 2011 on TV Ontario’s “Big Ideas”, later
reproduced on the Literary Review of Canada website, January
1, 2012.
http://reviewcanada.ca/essays/2012/01/01/the-collapse-of-the-laurentian-consensus/
ii
Jared Milne, “The Conservative Narrative of Canada: Differences
and Divergences.” Vive Le Canada, February
9, 2011.
http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/235930937-the-conservative-narrative-of-canada-differences-and-divergences
See also Paul Wells and John Geddes, “What You
Don’t Know About Stephen Harper.” Maclean’s
Magazine, January 31, Section 2.
http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/01/31/what-you-dont-know-about-stephen-harper/2/,
and John Ibbitson and
Erin Anderssen, “How Stephen Harper is Remaking the Canadian
Myth”. The
Globe and Mail, May
1, 2012.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/how-stephen-harper-is-remaking-the-canadian
myth/article2419732/?utm_medium=Feeds%3A%20RSS%2FAtom&utm_source=Home&utm_content=2419732
iii
Roger Gibbins and Loleen Berdahl, Western Visions, Western
Futures: Perspectives on the West in Canada. Peterborough,
Ontario: Broadview Press, 2003. Page 44.
iv
Hugh Segal, “John Diefenbaker: The Populist Conservative.” The
National Post, February 16, 2011.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/02/16/hugh-segal-john-diefenbaker-the-populist-conservative/
v
Quoted in Charles Taylor, Radical Tories. Toronto: House of
Anansi Press, 2006. Original edition 1982, House of Anansi Press.
Page 203.
vi
Ron Dart, “Diefenbaker and Harper: Classical Canadian Tory Meets
Republican Conservative.” Clarion Journal of Spirituality and
Justice, December 2006.
http://www.clarion-journal.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2006/12/diefenbaker_and.html
vii
Ron Dart, The Red Tory Tradition: Ancient Roots, New Routes.
Dewdney, British Columbia: Synaxis Press, 1999. Pages 33-37.
viii
Quoted in Karen Kun and Toby A.A. Heaps,
“Interview With Preston Manning”. Corporate Knights website,
Issue 21, 2007.
http://www.corporateknights.com/article/green-conservative-interview-preston-manning
ix
Shawn McCarthy, “Oil Sands, Green Groups
Unlikely Allies In Push For Carbon Tax.” The
Globe and Mail, March 7, 2012.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/oil-sands-green-groups-unlikely-allies-in-push-for-carbon-tax/article552864/
x
Preston Manning, The New Canada. Toronto: Macmillan Canada,
1992. Pages 94-109, especially pages 99-100.
xi
Milne, “The Conservative Narrative of Canada: Differences and
Divergences.”
xii
Richard Clippingdale, Robert Stanfield’s Canada: Perspectives
of the Best Prime Minister We Never Had. Montreal &
Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008. Pages 73-74 and
110-111.
xiii
Tom Flanagan, “Re: ‘Has the Centre Vanished?’ by Stephen
Clarkson.” Literary Review of Canada, November 2011. Page
30.
xiv
Geo Takach, Will The Real Alberta Please Stand Up? Edmonton:
University of Alberta Press, 2010. Pages 129-144.
xv
John Ralston Saul, Reflections of a Siamese Twin: Canada at the
End of the Twentieth Century. Toronto: Penguin Books, 1997.
Pages 369-374.
xvi
Takach, pages 65-76.
xvii
Ibid, pages 73-74, 91.
xviii
Ibid., pages 75, 110-112 and 334.
xix
Wildrose Party Energy policy statement,
http://www.wildrose.ca/policy-text/energy/
xx
Wildrose Party media statement, February 1, 2012.
http://www.wildrose.ca/feature/more-pipelines-more-upgrading-smith/
xxi
Christian Dufour, Lettre
aux souverainistes québécois et aux fédéralistes canadiens qui
sont restés fidèles au Québec. Montreal : Les
Éditions internationales Alain Stanké, 2000. Pages 90-99.
xxii
Peter H. Russell, Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Become a
Sovereign People? Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
Pages 50-51. See also Jeremy Webber, Reimagining Canada:
Language, Culture, Community and the Canadian Constitution. Kingston
& Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1994. Page 276.
xxiii
Claude Couture, Paddling
With The Current: Pierre Elliot Trudeau, Etienne Parent, Liberalism
and Nationalism in Canada. Translated
by Vivien Bosley. Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press, 1996.
xxiv
Stéphane Dion, Straight
Talk: Speeches and Writings on Canadian Unity. Kingston,
Ontario: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999. Pages 135-149.
xxv
Claude Ryan, Regards
sur le fédéralisme canadien. Les
Éditions du Boréal, 1995. Pages 137-138 and 174-181.
xxvi
Gibbins and Berdahl, page 61.
xxvii
Stéphane Dion, “Le
nationalisme dans la convergence culturelle : Le Québec
contemporain et le paradoxe de Tocqueville” in L’Engagement
intellectuel : mélanges en honneur de Léon Dion, ed.
by Raymond Hudon and Réjean Pelletier. Sainte-Foy, Québec :
Les Presses de l’Université Laval, 1991, pp. 291-311.
xxviii
See for instance Harold Cardinal, The
Unjust Society. Vancouver: Douglas &
MacIntyre, 1999. Originally published by Hurtig Publishers, 1969.
See also Ovide Mercredi and Mary Ellen Turpel, In
The Rapids: Navigating the Future of First Nations. Toronto:
Penguin Books Canada, 1993. See also Alan Cairns, Citizens
Plus: Aboriginal Peoples and the Canadian State. Vancouver:
UBC Press, 2000.
xxix
Saul, pages 81-100.
xxx
Gibbins and Berdahl, page 28.
xxxi
Cardinal, pages 54-55.
xxxiii
Russell, page 111.
xxxiv
Jane Taber, “As Political Centre Shifts, Manning Now Fears
‘Eastern Alienation.’” The Globe and Mail, January 24,
2012.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/as-political-centre-shifts-manning-now-fears-eastern-alienation/article620984/
xxxv
Loleen Berdahl, Whither Western Alienation? Shifting Patterns of
Western Canadian Discontent with the Federal Government. The
Canada West Foundation, October 2010.
http://cwf.ca/pdf-docs/publications/Whither-Western-Alienation.pdf
See also Barbara Yaffe, “It’s No Surprise That Alienation Is
Heading East.” The Vancouver Sun, October 22, 2010.
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/westcoastnews/story.html?id=09f080ed-b811-4088-bc3b-1c6c19240f95
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