1  2  3  Next

While there are other valid candidates (e.g. Macdonald's National Policy, the creation of the CBC, elimination of the Crow Rate, Mulroney's handling of the CF-18 contract, blocking of the proposal for the Province of Buffalo in favour of a more finely divided and less influential set of prairie provinces), the clear front-runner for the distinction of being the defining act of the Laurentian Consensus was Pierre Trudeau's National Energy Program, which Marc Lalonde later admitted was enacted with the express goal of keeping money and power concentrated in Central Canada.

I hold that the old Laurentian Consensus has receded in favour of (or has evolved into, depending on one's perspective) what I call the "Downtown Consensus", which acts much like the old regime, except that it cares less about East-West divisions than it does urban versus suburban and rural. Keeping rural Canadians from having a strong influence in national affairs has been a long-standing objective of the Canadian left, the agrarian prairie roots of the CCF notwithstanding. Try to imagine Avi Lewis driving a tractor without laughing. But suppressing the suburban lifestyle, with its cars, spacious low-rise housing, and affinity for franchise businesses is now the priority project. Always citing economic and environment concerns publicly but clearly motivated more by a rigid ideological collectivism, the modern generation of city planners, indoctrinated with the ideas of Jane Jacobs and backed by UN bureaucrats, try to recreate the old Soviet central-planning dream on the smaller canvas of the "city state".

So what will the signature initiative of this new elite be? What will the urbanist social engjneer's equivalent of the National Energy Program be? Will it be a narrowing or closing of roads for car traffic that brings about a virtual ban on the car? Will it be an aggressive infill program for suburbs that bulldozes single-family homes to be replaced by multi-story mixed-use complexes? Will it be a ban on chain stores and restaurants in favour of so-called "mom and pop" enterprises? Will supermarkets be torn down in favour of farmers' markets or small-scale grocers peddling only local food products? Will it be a program forcing unwilling people onto bicycles? Use your imagination. You know the elites of the Downtown Consensus are.

   

Further evidence of the shift from the Laurentian Consensus to the Downtown Consensus - it's become okay to bash Bombardier. Bombardier was the ultimate Laurentian sacred cow, protected and privileged by Central Canadian politicians of both the red and blue persuasions. Only "Western cranks" dared to challenge Canada's most obvious case of corporate welfare. We're talking the company that pretty much led to the creation of the Reform Party. Any criticism of Bombardier and the subsidies and sweetheart deals that nourished it was met with the predictable bleating of "Avro Arrow" from nationalists who insisted that Canada cling to its current aerospace champion at any cost. Never mind that the bleating would have been much fainter, or non-existent, had Bombardier been headquartered in Calgary or Winnipeg.

But that was the past. What changed? Bombardier didn't come through on streetcars for Toronto. David Miller gift-wrapped the contract to them, and they failed to deliver. Bombardier was playing the old Laurentian game. Canada was a captive market, because Avro. They could focus on international markets. We were in the bag. But they didn't count on the fact that downtown Torontonians identify with their city (and the urban lifestyle in general) more than with the regional entity "Central Canada". Instead of looking down their noses at Westerners, they now focus their disdain towards suburbanites and rural Canadians. Nenshi in Calgary is seen as an ally, whereas small town Ontario and the sprawling suburbs of the GTA are now in the enemy category. And a Quebec company no longer gets a pass from them just because they're from Quebec (or even Canada).

   

   

I see you own one of the new record players that Bombardier is making for the Canadian market!

   

Also I notice there's a tendency on both sides to want to rename Agenda 21.

We're calling it "The Downtown Consensus" now, are we?

I forget what the Progs were renaming it, but it came up at the last climate conference. A different agenda name of some sort, but the same agenda.

I see why us Anti-21ers would want to rename it. A temporary respite from a refusal to ignore the obvious being attacked with tinfoil hat memes.

But why do the Progs want to rename it? Perhaps because what I just mentioned wasn't working. The jig was up with "Agenda 21." It was another case of that phenomena that plaques the Progressive agenda in general, where the little boy points and says, "but he's got no clothes, Mom."

So rinse, repeat, but call it something different.

   

Agenda-21? The next time you open a beer pause for a moment to reflect on the bravery of those boys that fell at the Battle of Jade Helm and of those selfless agents who never came back from Comet PingPong.

   

See this is why we need to call it the downtown consensus. Slate tells them the above is clever, and off they go as programmed.



But the UN changed the name, because that trick wasn't working so well anymore. Turns out there's more to "the Downtown Consensus" than the simplistic spew of Slatey's and the other side was starting to do a good job explaining it.

Solution: Change the label.

Apparently it works well for both sides, so I'm for it. Makes the debate more interesting. I just like to observe the obvious is all. So I tell you I notice. It's still pointing, just at something different. Which I also think is interesting.

   

The odd thing is that I actually agreed with almost all of what the OP said. The city hall types are openly contemptuous of anyone who lives outside their inner city core, even when it's the maligned suburbs that provide most of the tax base to keep the goddamn place running. At least it is in Calgary, where a downtown-centric mentality on the city council is shared by at least ten councilors who are best described, charitably too, as arrogant fucking morons. Disrespect by elitists for those who pick up almost the entire bill? Golly, who could imagine such a thing?

That being said things were going OK here until you had to wreck it with you gooby-dooby "progtard" insults. There was no call for doing that.

   

Let's try a thought experiment Thanos. Blank your mind out to how you've been told Agenda 21 was just about Jade Helm. That was only a sliver being shaved off the wood of the block of truth and presented as the sculpture.

Read this bit from the OP again:

That's what Agenda 21 actually did, or attempted to do. Yes I know, it was never implemented officially. However if you like I can link you to people (rational, credible people - even a Liberal or two if you like) explaining the complexities of how it actually was being implemented. This counter 21 side was starting to have success fighting back. I'm thinking that would be why the thinkers at the top of the other side would like a name change.

From what I'm calling our side, I'm in favor of Individualist's idea of a name change too, even though I'm guessing he disagrees with my opinion on why it's a good idea, or even that it is a name change. Nevertheless, the reason I'm with him is look how many words I had to waste to explain this to you.

   

I think we're reading a little more into my pet name for this phenomenon than was my goal. I coined "Downtown Consensus" (or at least think I did, now I'm not so sure) as a play on the Laurentian Consensus (which I had previously called by another name before Ibbitson's stuck). My point at the time was that the paternalism and power-hoarding previously associated the elites of Quebec and Southern Ontario (and exemplified by a previous generation of Trudeau) had shifted, not to the the West as Ibbitson had suggested, but rather to the cores of the large Canadian cities. Under this shift, suburbanites and rural Canadians of all regions have become the new "Westerner". The current Trudeau and his government align more this new model - more Adam Vaughan than Marc Lalonde, you might say.

I don't really buy into the Agenda 21 urbanism-as-UN-plot concept. That seems too grandiose an explanation for what I see simply as a case of home-grown cultural Marxists wrapping themselves V'Ger-like around the urban design theories of Jane Jacobs. Unreformed Marxists like Richard Florida reinvent themselves as management gurus, continuing the same left-wing long game of socially elevating artists and academics over businesspeople and those in the applied physical sciences. The diffrence is that they've shifted their focus from the nation-state to the city-state. But it's the same old project of collectivism and control. They've just jettisoned any remaining illusion of solidarity with the blue collar segment of the working class.

   

I understand what you're saying, Individualist. As I said, we might disagree on background, but I'm on board with you for the label, even if you are just having fun with it.

As to what is or isn't Agenda 21, it always appears first as home grown.

You know what works for me? Find the names of the people behind it. Type them into Google. Now start to type the term "sustainability". See how many letters you can type before Google completes the word for you.

Ibbitson takes 4, Jane Jacobs 3. If Richard Florida is telling you he's not agenda 21, he's full of it. Dick can get you to the Agenda 21 buzzword in 2 letters.

This guy, right?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/ ... e27163937/

OK, try Rosa Koire of Democrats against Agenda 21. Tell me Dick and Rosa aren't talking about the same thing.

But yes, it's happening in Canada too. It will appear homegrown at first, wherever it pops up.

   

I wasn't told anything like that. I said it because all this Agenda 21 crap is on the same level of stupidity from the usual twats that brought us "Jews did 9/11" to "the moon landing was faked" to "Common Core is turning public school kids into faggots" to "AAAAUUUUGGGGHHHH! Chemtrails!". No patience for any of this. Hence the deployment of immediate incessant mockery when it's used in what's supposed to be an informative and serious discussion.

Sigh. I've been here for almost 22000 posts. Thought that some of you might have been paying more attention to my gig by now. As Shep said best, being a common-sense reactionary waging eternal thankless war against the Forces of Dark Silliness is something I'll always wear with pride as a badge.

   

Well, I'll admit that I don't find it hard to imagine Jennifer Keesmaat and Brent Toderian as being UN flunkies. What are their Google scores?

   

Is it? Like this self-identifying Liberal, feminist, lesbian, forensic commercial real estate appraiser you mean:



Individualist told us about a guy pushing what Indi is calling "Downtown consensus." Really it's just Agenda 21. This Richard Florida guy was telling us how Canada needs faster connections between cities overtop areas he doesn't seem to want to talk too much about, but when you get to his new "sustainable" cities, boy howdy are they going to be bells and whistles flashy with everybody oh so happy in their high-rises, and just to make sure everything is rainbows and unicorn song he's going to have a collection of new ministries to watch over you things.

Now all Rosa is describing is how that was actually being worked towards in her area and how her activist organization was using legal methods to stop it - often successfully.

Actually Thanos you should make an effort to listen to her. I think you'd be surprised. Many of Rosa's bitches concerning what is happening in the world with government and corporations are your bitches. What you think you know now is incorrect.

   

They're just 4s. So without knowing anything else about them I'd say they're under the wider influence, but not close enough to the planning guys to know it.

(I'm joking, of course, but I'm not sure how much.)

   

1  2  3  Next