Inimitable Ibbitson of the Globe and Mail (more here earlier), assisted by pllster Darrell Bricker, sees the multicultural suburban and western light–and David Akin of Sun News approves:
Harper “Birthers” and other Laurentian media conspiracies
…
Many (most?) members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery should read this book if only for Bricker’s demographic analysis which may help those of us in Ottawa understand some of the shifts in thought and temperament in the rest of the country. Mind you, I and my press gallery colleagues will also learn that Ibbitson and Bricker think very little of most of our employers and their Laurentian bias when it comes to the news.
Ibbitson (though he works for a paper that is among the most guilty in terms of providing false comfort for the Laurentian elites — anyone see the Globe’s A1 after Redford won her Alberta premiership?) and Bricker are scathing when it comes to the the hysterics of Harper’s mainstream media critics. Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin and Toronto Star columnist Heather Mallick get singled out but there is no shortage of what Ibbitson and Bricker call Laurentian media elites who “believe that any government outside its ideological or geographical frame of reference is not a legitimate government. Its policies are not simply wrong, but destructive. The suburban voters who have detached themselves from their former allies in city centers are deluded. The elections that brought such a government to power had to have been corrupted. The Conservative government is not misguided; it is evil. Stephen Harper is evil.”..
Bit of worm-turning by Mr Ibbitson, I’d say.
Did they iclude Michael Harris in the ‘list’?
http://www.ipolitics.ca/2013/02/24/stephen-harper-worlds-worst-talent-scout/
Ibbitson is hoping for a senate seat appointment from Harper.
Diefenbaker, Joe Clark and Stephen Harper to be the worst prime ministers ever? And they make up 100 % of the prime ministers from the west?
Central Canada’s problem is they’ve spent 140 shafting the west and they fear we might want equality. They simply fear fairness and justice. They don’t see that even Harper doesn’t have enough stroke to kill the eastern gravy train.
Alberta subsidizes something like $8 billion yearly for Quebec and 1/4 or more of our military work in offices in Ottawa while endless bases in the west (Calgary, Winnipeg etc.)have been closed. Etc. Etc. Etc.
I’m surprised that Ibbitson would go after Lawrence Martin of all people. Always thought they were a quasi-duo.
I read a synopsis or summation of that book about Canada’s political shift. I’m not convinced. The GOP/US conservative movement were pretty smug and confident circa 2002 as well and thy blew. I’m sure Harper and Co. can blow it. It’s meaningless anyways just swapping out one statist party for another statist party.
Oh dry up, Scar, you perpetual whiner. Ontario subsidized the west for the first 120 years of Confederation. Is that all Canada means to you? An accounting exercise? What are we to say about western conservatives, that they’re all a bunch of snivelers like you?
As for your stupid comment about bases. Do you want an armed forces with the right killing tools, or do you want a bunch of empty bases providing subsidies for the locals (western locals seeing as that’s what you’re complaining about)?
As for you, iberia, can’t handle it, can you, that your views are beooming obsolete? You might not have noticed but Quebec has opted out of a constructive role in national politics for the past 20 years. Sooner or later another alignment was going to displace the now-obsolete Laurentian consensus. So accuse Ibby of butt-kissing all you want. Ibby’s just waking up to the notion that you and the rest of your kind are as politically extinct as the dodo. You should know by now that political power always follows economic strength.
cgh “Ontario subsidized the west for the first 120 years of Confederation.”
Didn’t happen. The colonial attitude was reflected in goodies like the Wheat Board whereby smart easteners got to tell stupid westerners how to manage their affairs. Wheat farmers also got the privilege of paying for the St. Lawrence Seaway by shipping their grain through it despite the west coast being significantly closer.
You can almost smell the fear coming out of tony Toronto Clubs and Montreal Faculties that thy are on an accelerating trip to irrelevance.
Faster, faster please faster.
As Artie Johnson would say…verryy interesting…
I’ve always viewed him as the other rower in Malice’s boat, I guess the leftwing author’s books aren’t selling all that well these days?
I think I will buy the book. It will be great to read just how Ibbitson and Bricker think the “Laurentian Elites” are losing their grip on the country. Hopefully they are right.
Next, we have to convince Manitoba and BC voters to dump the Marxists.
Sorry cgh, I’m with scar on this. Even the decision to give provincial status to the prairies was designed to make sure the Laurentian elites would be able to keep control of the country. The original plan of the western representatives was to have one province. The Laurentian elites wanted to split the west into manageable smaller political entities.
The Wheat Board, marketing boards favouring Quebec, the NEP, are among the most visible manifestations of milking the west.
I do agree that because of the size of our military there is some logic in closing many of the urban military bases and stationing the troops in the area that they train in, such as Shilo, Wainright, Petawawa, Gagetown and other smaller ones.
Personally, I think western provinces are moving past the anger over the Laurentian-central policies that provided fuel for western alienation. It’s becoming a less personal, more indifferent relationship similar to a distant relative- a 3rd cousin twice removed perhaps. You may share an common ancestor but little else. The only time sparks fly is when central Canada *politicians* and self-appointed elites get it into their heads that they need to meddle in our economy. Sharing is one thing, economic shakedowns are quite another. You never hear The West musing about shutting down or penalizing major employers in other parts of the country.
Counter-intuitively, IMO, decentralization and regaining more power at the provincial level is the key to keep both the West and Quebec happy. Less resentment.
Ibbitson is not stupid …. but he is a died in the wool liberal.
Ken, prior to 1973 it would have been cheaper to ship Persian Gulf oil to Western Canada than it would have been to drill in Alberta. But the Ottawa River dividing line gave Alberta a guaranteed market that allowed its oil industry to grow. That dividing line kept Ontario supplied with Alberta oil for more than half a century when it would have been cheaper for Ontario to get it by much shorter rail links from the Port of Montreal.
The TCPL was another huge government-sponsored infrastructure project that gave Alberta gas a market which it would not otherwise have had. Again, Ontario had cheaper altneratives through importing Texas gas by not needing nearly as much infrastructure construction.
The federal government and Ontario taxpayers paid out about 80 years of heavy subsidization for money-losing railways, again to provide west to east rail links. And these rail links in part were used to ship Saskatchwan coal to Ontario’s coal-fired stations even though that was massively more expensive than just importing more coal from Kentucky and Tennessee.
Albertans like to complain now that they are paying a large portion of the federal equalization payment structure. They conveniently overlook that in constant dollar terms they will have to continue at the current rate for at least another half century to begin to match what Ontario threw in subsequent to Confederation.
And you’re mistaken about the dairy marketing board. It’s not that it favours Quebec. It favours dairy farmers irrespective of what province they are in. It puts the boots to ALL Canadian consumers.
LC Bennett, I agree with your thesis here, but only in part. Remember this one?
“Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark.”
It’s still with us. Just ask Scar.
Your final statement is not counter-intuitive, it’s bang on. Different regions and provinces have different economic circumstances and problems and need flexibility to solve them in their own way. And think about this. If even a relatively small (economy and populatin) nation like Canada has problems with scale, imagine just how disastrous a failure the One World Government deliriously hoped for by the Kosmopolitians would be. The magnitude of its failure is such that it can never be. And we’re seeing evidence of that on a much smaller scale: the impending breakdown of the European Union.
Scar, “It’s not that it favours Quebec. It favours dairy farmers irrespective of what province they are in. It puts the boots to ALL Canadian consumers.”
Not so sure, as doesn’t Quebec have about 50% pf the dairy quota and as well the resulting spin offs such as cheese and yogurt?
The Laurentian elites wanted to split the west into manageable smaller political entities.
Hm. I don’t think it’s a given that the west would be better off as one entity. Unity is overrated.
Albertans like to complain now that they are paying a large portion of the federal equalization payment structure. They conveniently overlook that in constant dollar terms they will have to continue at the current rate for at least another half century to begin to match what Ontario threw in subsequent to Confederation.
‘Ontario’ and ‘Alberta’ are not people. Just because some bastards threw money at some other bastards doesn’t mean I should be obligated to throw mine back where the first bastards were throwing it from. One wrong does not make another right. BTW equalization was harmful to the recipient. It perverted Quebec silent revolution into a soft-1789 that has bankrupted its society. It kept rewarding prairie socialism and that kept the west poor and lame.
It seems to me that these regional views and resentments–not to mention the very distinct ones of the Québécois–indicate a pretty loose sort of national feeling as compared to, say, the Americans. Or the French and Germans (the Brits now perhaps coming some way towards our path).
A real country?
Mark
Ottawa
I’m not a big fan of the idea that the West is an indentured servant on the basis of decisions made over the past 120 years. Not all of those decisions were made solely to benefit the poor country cousins in the territories. In fact, voters from those areas had little influence on decision making. Then ,as today, it was a combination on well-meaning intentions and well-connected cronies and politicians personally profiting from the arrangements.
This idea of obligations for past promises will soon play out in democratic countries with falling birthrates, large public debt and larger unfunded liabilities. Do present and future generations really have to a duty to pay for promises made without their consent?
In the same line of reasoning, I did not yet have my drivers license never mind a bumper sticker when “Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark” appeared. As a child though I thought that the Canadian Prime Minister’s official title included f’ing since it always preceded his name. As in that f’ing Trudeau…and who knows, my kids might suffer from the same misunderstanding if all goes according to the New Lauretian Party’s plan. 🙂
You are manifestly correct, although I feel that an Ontario-Western Canada version of “The Bickersons” is not likely to yield much in the way of positive.
Whether or not Ontario did this or that in the past is moot: the fact of the matter at the moment is that we ain’t cuttin’ it. The better position, IMO, is that Ontario needs to pull its collective head out of its collective lower posterior region, clean up its act big time and get back into a position of net financial contribution to Confederation, which a good many in Ontario (including you and me) support. It’d be much more to our credit, IMO, if we decided to participate in a race to the top, rather than in a race to the bottom. All of which is intended as support for your statement, not admonishment.
Given these “revelations”, which I think have been obvious for some time, even without Mr. Ibbitson’s official sanction, I am mystified by the defeatism around here about the chances of Mr. Trudeau, Jr. — he is, if ever there was one, the latter day incarnation of the Laurentian thesis, and not even remotely as compelling as his father, in whose time, “The Empire of the St. Lawrence”, to quote conservative historian Donald Creighton’s book title, was already seriously out of date.
Agreed Fred, its almost magic watching the leftards squirming and twisting trying to deny the obvious.
Ibbitson isn’t a Liberal….he isn’t a conservative either. He IS a Tory, and a small town Tory at that. So that’s where you get the communitarianism mixed with suspicions of elites.
Tory’s will defer to authority but don’t like authoritarianism, and won’t like urban elites since they don’t respect local culture or community.
Ibbitson is closer to George grant. Martin, typical city Liberal. Not natural allies.
Not agreeing or disagreeing with him but don’t call him what he isn’t.
The old wasp Ontario Tory is what ibbitson represents, what the big blue machine was from the 50’s through the 70’s.
And, might I add, there are still a good many of us still around — and maybe a few more from places you wouldn’t expect. Which we’re going to realize on our about June 13 (two days before Magna Carta Day), 2013.
Although I’m an Ontario Tory, I am conservative and a moderate libertarian, according to the test.
I do not agree … I’ve never heard him declare any political association.
I have been reading his work for decades and the only reason for that is because his analysis and writing tend to be pretty fair. He’s a good writer.
BUT … all too often he falls of his fence on the LEFT side.
The problem for these Small-c Torys … Red Torys and liberals is that the fence they sit on is not in the middleground they imagine themselves to be the owners of.
Maybe John is figuring this out… maybe not.
Mark, I could not agree with you more strongly. From a national perspective, these are indeed petty resentments. It’s what I dislike about the PQ; they have such a small parochial view of what their province is all about. And I find it dismaying when westerners who should know better follow down the same path to nowhere that Quebec pequists are treading.
LC Bennett, again I agree with you. The past is the past, and we have much better things to do than dwell on past debts and obligations. My point was simply that there are all too many in this forum who seem to think that interprovincial history started with the NEP. Parochialism serves no one.
There are all too many Westerners who seem to forget that PET is DEAD. And the rumblings of his style of Ottawa-centrism are lying in the grave beside. So all this ranting on by some of the gross injustices of the NEP can only come from one of two things: 1. a victim mentality; or 2. a belief that it will be resurrected at any time. If it’s 1, that says unpleasant and small-minded things about people who wish to chew over stale grudges like mouthfulls of vomit.
If it’s 2, HELLOOO, the West’s political power has done nothing but grow since 1980. And it’s still growing as it attracts a greater share of Canada’s economic strength and population. It’s simply ridiculous to suppose that son-of-NEP is ever coming back again despite the fond delusions of the left. For the first time ever in the history of our country, you don’t need a Quebec contingent to form a majority government. And given the rapid decline in pure laine francophones in birthrate and economic strength, that isn’t going to change anytime soon.
David Southam, absolutely true. Ontario needs to get its own act together. And the sooner we vote out useless governments that give us more nanny-state and less economic growth, the better. Of course what Ontario did for the rest of Confederation in the past is moot. Just as it’s moot today what other provinces complain about as to who’s contributing what.
I say again, tell it to the western separatistes, because they’re being just as silly as the original versions in the shadow of Le Chateau Frontenac.
And I thoroughly agree with you about the defeatism around hear about PET Jr. He’s an empty-headed pretty boy with zero qualifications or character for the top job. I am hard put to think of a single occasion when Canada has voted for a PM candidate who had so much style and so little substance. Harper and Co. will eat him for breakfast, if Mulcair and the Dippers don’t get him first. Canadian voters are ALWAYS much more hard-headed about national political choices than the useless butterflies in the media.
cgh:
Using Canadian sources of oil when at all possible was the right thing to do even before 1973. It would have been a fine mess if Barack Obama (say) could cut off the gas if Ottawa refused to do his bidding. We’d be as much in his thrall as the French and Germans are in the thrall of the house of Saud.
The real problem was that the Bay Street bigshots who bankrolled the Liberal Party believed that Alberta, the people who lived there and the oil underneath their feet belonged to Bay Street by divine right. Bay Street had no intention of giving normal people any more of the profits from Alberta’s oil than they absolutely had to, in the West or anywhere else. The plain people of Ontario never saw the money either, unless they made a living driving the cars or cleaning the houses of Toronto bankers. Everyone else got robbed as the gas station.
1973 changed everything. It did not just bring into sharp relief that Toronto and Montreal depended on the West far more than the West had ever managed to depend on them. An Ontario Protestant of average intelligence could now promise the woman of his dreams a house fit for a Christian in the boomtowns of Alberta, with room enough for as large a family as he and his wife had room in their hearts for. His girl, for her part, no longer had to settle for spending the best years of her life living with her mother-in-law in a tenement in Hamilton or Windsor.
That was another reason Trudeau opened the floodgates of immigration. His only other option for maintaining Ontario and Quebec’s populations and comfortable Liberal majorities in both was Soviet-style internal travel controls. By the late Seventies Upper Canada’s industrial towns had as little left to attract a white man as Upper Silesia. English Canadians in Central Canada who had any ambition in life were packing their bags and moving west—and starting to vote Conservative, having figured out by the West’s example what they owed the “bastards” who lorded it over the cities of the east—precisely nothing.
So many erors, Diok it’s hard to know where to start. Germany and France don’t get their oil from the House of Saud, they get it from Libya, Nigeria and in Germany’s case Russia. Saudi oil mostly goes to Japan, China, India.
1973 didn’t do quite what you think it did. It may have inconvenienced the West, but it was an utter disaster for Saudi Arabia. Its effect was to push up prices and introduce lots of non-OPEC oil into the market. OPEC’s ability to set a world price died in 1974.
The US would have been no more interested in cutting off Canada from oil and gas than it would its right arm. Canada developed domestic sources of supply, even if more expensive, because of the inability of Canada to intervene in a US labour strike. That’s one of the key reasons why Ontario went nuclear starting in the 1960s.
Bay Street isn’t about divine right. It’s about money. And it would have been just as happy with lower cost solutions as long as they provided stability.
Trudeau didn’t open the floodgates of immigration; that happened after the Second World War. You seem to have forgotten the immigration boom occurring under McKenzie King, St. Laurent and Pearson.
Upper Canada’s industrial towns never had growth so strong as in the 1990s and 2000s until the financial crisis. So your second last paragraph is just silly. Ontario was the immigration destination of choice, both internal and external long after the 1973 so-called turning point you identify.
And your reference to Upper Silesia is truly amazing. It is today and has been for centuries one of the richest industrial areas in Europe. Why do you think Frederick II wanted it in 1741? For the same reason that it’s the growth engine of Poland today.
There are the “blue” and “red” state divisions.
The resentments in this country are often deservedly felt. There is a kind of regional snobbishness and/or undeserved sense of entitlement.
Moving on…
My view on this matter is that the primary divide is between the inhabitants of the countryside and small towns/cities and the moonbats that flock to the large population centers of the country. I suspect that there is little difference in opinion between the urban inhabitants of Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal. These are people who have little contact with reality, believe in the nanny state and are generally personally helpless.
I can’t believe I spent as long in the moonbat capital of Canada as I did as it’s been a breath of fresh air to live in what is a blue-collar/rural community where people have intimate familiarity with reality. I have a lot more in common with an NDP voting neighbor who nevertheless feels it’s his right to carry a pistol concealed when he travels than the CINO’s I’ve met in Vancouver.
The interior of BC and the non-urban parts of Alberta and Saskatchawan are where the major economic growth is happening. Rural Ontario is as different from the deluded masses of downtown Toronto as the interior of BC is from the moonbats in Vancouver/Victoria.
I much prefer dealing with people who are self-reliant and scorn the state even though they can have quite peculiar ideas about medicine (not like the worried well of downtown Vancouver, but rather the “everything I’ve needed to treat myself with I’ve gotten at the local veterinary supply store for the last 30 years”). Finally after years of looking for a suitable medical analogy I’ve come to ask them how often they change the oil in their truck and then make them consider the fact that maybe seeing a doctor more than once/decade or two might be equivalent to running their truck without an oil change for that long.
The “Laurentian elites” discussed in the book are just as home in downtown Vancouver as they are in downtown Toronto. They’re in for a rude awakening when the economy falls off a cliff as they really produce nothing and the true production is in the areas that they turn their noses up at and which they’ve forced as much of as possible out of the country to third world countries in the interests of “preventing pollution”.
“Bit of worm-turning by Mr Ibbitson, I’d say.”
I’d say it may be more like an intellectual and ethical epiphany. At least these are a couple of the “Laurentian” Journo-list who do not hold truth to be a menace.
I have often pondered why this “Laurentian elite” have such malicious hatred toward such an innocuous lot as the Harper government. I always put it down to the tantrum of a spoiled brat who is used to having his way and is taking a petulant snit refusing to share the national agenda with others outside the smug eastern ruling class clique – apparently I was partially correct.
As for partisan extremists like Mallick, I am in awe at how public figures this neurotic are not in clinical care instead of given a national megaphone to spew their neurotic jibbering. I suppose this kind of partisan vitriol is what is needed to keep the self centered bigotry of the Laurentian cult at a peak.
In any event, it seems likely our political and intellectual betters who presume to preside over the public agenda, are deeply flawed self-centered individuals – morally, intellectually and psychologically impaired. It’s unfortunate this is the clique who control the MSM.
cgh: “Ontario subsidized the west for the first 120 years of Confederation.”
Only(!) 120 years, you say? LOL That’s for the good laugh.