The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future, by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson

Abstract

Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson The Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future Toronto: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 2013. 294 pp $27.99 (hardback) ISBN: 978-1443416450If there is one thing Canadian commentators agree on, it is that the events of 9/11 and the financial crisis, aided and abetted by the Conservative governments led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, have changed the country's social and cultural makeup. This is, however, where the consensus ends: opinions on the extent, durability, and desirability of these changes vary widely. Some commentators bemoan the new Canada, charging the Conservatives with forsaking the nation's spirit; others happily note the return of a Conservative Canada, reclaiming its values at home and prepared to robustly defend its interests abroad.Ipsos Reid pollster Darrell Bricker and The Globe and Mai! columnist John Ibbitson do not judge whether what they call the Big - a set of societal, cultural, and economic changes which underpin the election of a majority Conservative government - is a good or a bad thing. But they do argue that the shift is real, is here to stay, and is ignored at one's own political and economic peril. According to Bricker and Ibbitson, the shift has two major sources. One is the demographic, economic, and political rise of Canada's West; the other is immigration, which has changed the makeup of middle-class Ontario suburbs. Current immigration patterns mean that most newcomers have more links to the West than the east: they often hail from Asian countries and, even if they settle in the East, they often have family in western Canadian provinces. Western-oriented and with an ethos of self-reliance and economic discipline, new immigrants moved their vote away from its traditional home in the Liberal Party and joined the West in voting Conservative. The federal election of 2011, which delivered a majority Conservative government with a power base in the West, support in suburban Ontario, and little presence in Quebec or Atlantic Canada, testifies to the strength of this new coalition.The new coalition has displaced what Bricker and Ibbitson refer to as the Consensus of big-city Ontario and Quebec, which had underpinned the electoral dominance of the Liberal Party and shaped Canada's institutions in the twentieth century. The priorities of the new electoral coalition are not those that preoccupied the Laurentian elites. Confident and multicultural, this new Canada is not concerned with protecting national identity, fussing over the English/French divide, and implementing progressive policies at the federal level. Rather, it expects its government to keep its books in order and step aside. In foreign policy, instead of looking to the Atlantic for international associations and trade opportunities, the new Canada turns to the Pacific first.While occasionally guilty of overstatement and overly florid in style, in its broad strokes the Bricker/Ibbitson analysis is convincing. The Conservatives' ability to build a winning coalition with no recourse to Quebec is a novelty in Canadian politics and strongly suggests that something of significance is afoot. The book, however, does a less thorough job at the level of detail. A distinction between the societal base of the Shift and its partisan, Conservative manifestations is signposted but not systematically elaborated on. As a consequence, the book can only suggest that some Conservative values will wax and others wane; it does not offer a disciplined argument as to what might stay and what might go. …