Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard: Conservative post-nationalism is a bad idea
The authors of Breaking Point were wrong about Canada's political realignment in 2013, and get it wrong again today.
Canadian orthodoxy is at a breaking point, but not the one its defenders imagine.
When it was published in 2013, The Big Shift by Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson caused quite a stir. Two years after Stephen Harper’s majority victory, they predicted a structural change in Canada, where power would shift westward, and where a new coalition built around the Prairies and Toronto’s immigrant suburbs would ensure that “the Conservative Party of Canada will have an advantage going into any given election.” The Liberal Party would be replaced by the NDP, to the benefit of a new coalition of progressives initiated by Quebec’s “orange wave.”
Two years later, the Conservatives lost to Justin Trudeau’s Liberals and, despite winning the popular vote in 2019 and 2021, they are still in opposition. As for the NDP, it was, for all intents and purposes, swallowed up by the LPC. Clearly, the big shift did not go as planned.
With Breaking Point: The New Big Shifts Putting Canada at Risk, Ipsos CEO Darrell Bricker and former Globe and Mail journalist John Ibbitson tackle the political crisis shaking the country, as alienation grows, particularly in Alberta, Quebec, and among the younger generation.
They make many accurate observations.
Pride and attachment to Canada are in free fall, particularly among young people, after ten years of Justin Trudeau “substituting shame for pride in Canada’s past,” as they put it. Forty percent of Canadians under the age of 35 would therefore agree to become Americans if they were offered citizenship and the conversion of their financial assets into U.S. dollars. Similarly, the Anglo-Canadian consensus in favour of increased immigration has collapsed, with, as they recognise, “a clear majority of Canadians saying there is too much immigration” for the first time in 25 years.
The last federal election also confirmed a new class divide that is taking place throughout the West: “As the NDP vote evaporated, the Conservatives earned the support of those without university degrees and office jobs, while among the educated elites, the Liberals were the majority choice.”
After correctly identifying so many fundamental new trends in Canada today, it is quite mystifying that Bricker and Ibbitson offer solutions that are largely disconnected from these problems and in no way challenge the vision of a “post-national country whose best days lie ahead, and whose wealth and tolerance will make us an example for and the envy of the world,” which they championed in The Big Shift. Reality has since proven that this project is unable to create pride and does not generate much envy either.
Although critical of what they term the “Laurentian elite,” concentrated in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, they share the same scapegoats, namely Quebec nationalists and cultural and social conservatives. The authors lucidly criticise Justin Trudeau’s vision of Canada as a post-national, environmentalist, and so-called “inclusive” country, where “anyone who did not share those values did not belong in his Canada,” yet their vision of conservatives and nationalists is no different.
Bricker and Ibbitson lament that only 15 percent of Quebecers were born outside Canada, compared to 30 percent in Ontario. They see the laws to protect Quebec’s identity adopted by the Legault government as a form of “insularity [which] threatens to alienate newcomers, discourage investment, and accelerate demographic decline, [and] leave [Quebec] economically and socially marginalised.” While acknowledging that the immigration system has been broken in the past 10 years, and that younger generations are paying a disproportionate price because of it, they maintain that the solution is “not to shut the door,” and that immigration must remain “Canada’s main engine of growth.” Even the Carney Liberals seem to realise that this is no longer sustainable.
Similarly, they show hostility to an Anglo-Canadian conservatism that would manifest itself in ways other than deregulation or tax cuts. Scepticism of the CBC, transgenderism, or DEI policies would be nothing more than a distraction for the benefit of those they textually describe as “crazies,” and would alienate the majority of voters, even though they grudgingly acknowledge that “the broader public may support a few of these policies.”
By so faithfully reproducing what they criticise about the Trudeau era, one wonders what structural changes the authors really want, beyond more residential construction, defence investments, and natural resource exploitation. All of this is desirable, but most of the proposals put forward by Bricker and Ibbitson are not incompatible with the current government’s agenda, even though it is dominated by the “Laurentian elite” they see as responsible for most of Canada’s problems.
The authors rightly argue for better representation of Western Canada and decentralisation from the federal government, but can this really be achieved simply by adding the managerial classes of Edmonton and Vancouver to those of Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto? Is it possible without taking into account the specific values of Western rural voters who have been left behind for the past decade?
Breaking Point looks more like another plea for “progressive conservatism,” with more support in Western Canada, than a structural reform plan that could reorient the country. In all Western countries, however, the opposite realignment is taking place: the right is consolidating around the two-thirds of voters who work in manual labour and care sectors and are more culturally and socially conservative, while the left is becoming the party of the educated and progressive elites.
David Coletto of Abacus Data recently found that only 6 percent of Canadians are economically conservative and culturally progressive, just as Patrick Ruffini illustrates in Party of the People that barely 12 percent of Americans would be interested in a similar offer.
Faced with these facts, one has to conclude that those who advocate for a progressive and liberal right are promoting their personal opinions rather than defending a winning strategy. Need we remind ourselves that Quebec nationalism, which Bricker and Ibbitson describe as a rearguard fight that no longer appeals to Quebecers, won two elections with overwhelming majorities under François Legault, and that only the Parti Québécois, with an equally, if not more, firm stance on identity, has managed to surpass it in the polls?
Canadian orthodoxy has indeed reached its breaking point, but “conservative post-nationalism,” if such a thing exists, will not change anything in this country’s decline. For the first time in recent memory, polls show that English Canada is increasingly sharing Quebec’s concerns about preserving its identity and values in the face of the post-national project and a broken immigration system. Why should this be ignored, except for the ideological blinders of a bygone era?
Above all, if voters concerned about immigration and family values are no longer welcome in conservative parties, where do they belong in politics? Such exclusion is a recipe for resentment and further polarisation, which explains the decline of institutional right-wing parties in favour of so-called “populist” parties throughout Europe.
Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson are far from wrong about everything. They clearly see that “a political realignment is coming. As young people recognize that the existing parties have little interest in addressing their concerns, new movements will emerge.”
The coming realignment will certainly be led by young people, but it will not be the realignment they think of.
Étienne-Alexandre Beauregard is a contributing editor at Without Diminishment, an author and researcher at Cardus. His latest book, Anti-Civilization: Why Our Societies Are Collapsing from Within, was published in September 2025 by Presses de la Cité. He was formerly a speechwriter and strategic planning advisor in the office of the Premier of Québec.
Bricker and Ibbotson live in the CBC/Globe bubble. I knew it well and can see it in some family today who see the world the way I used to before realizing how insular that view is. We don't have the classification of "Independent" as they do in the US, but that's what I've become, and I see more and more people like that all the time.