 We are delighted that Dr. Ruth Bell is here with us tonight. Her accomplishments and awards are many and impressive. She has been inducted into the Trinity College Honor Society at the University of Toronto. She has received the Governor General's Award in commemoration of the person's case. In 2007, she was honored at the YMCA YWCA Women of Distinction Awards with a Lifetime Achievement Award. That same year, Dr. Bell established the Hon. Dick and Ruth Bell Chair for the study of Canadian parliamentary democracy here at Carleton. This created a prestigious new academic position in the Department of Political Science and thus opportunity for dedicated teaching and research into Canada's dynamic democratic system. In 2004, she published her memoirs entitled, Be a Nice Girl, A Woman's Journey in the 20th Century. For her generosity, commitment and dedication to the advancement of Carleton University and its values, Dr. Bell received Carleton's highest non-academic award, the Founder's Award at Convocation Ceremonies in June 2010. In May of 2009, Dr. Bell was honored with a degree of Doctor of Sacred Ladders from her alma mater, Trinity College, for her lifelong dedication to public service, education and family, with an emphasis on the status of women. As you will see by reading the program notes, these are about a few of Dr. Bell's achievements. They are testimony to the contribution she has made and continues to make to public debate. Please join me now in acknowledging her contributions to Carleton University and the larger community. Since 1992, the Bell lecturers have given distinguished Canadians an opportunity to speak on matters of politics and public policy. We're very privileged this evening to have as our speaker a best-selling author and highly sought-after media commentator who also happens to lead one of the world's top social research firm. To introduce him to you, I'd like to call upon Barry Wright, Associate Dean and Director of the Arthur Kruger College of Public Affairs. Barry? Thank you, Dean Plourde. As Dean Plourde noted, the Bell Lecture Series honors the contributions of distinguished Canadians active in public service and public affairs and provides an opportunity for them to speak on historical or current matters of politics and public policy. Dr. Daryl Bricker joins an illustrious list of Bell Lecturers, stretching from Robert Stanfield in 1992 to Richard Gwynn, who delivered the last Bell Lecture. Dr. Bricker is CEO for Ipso Global Public Affairs in Toronto, a firm that conducts social research, political polling, and corporate reputation research around the world. He began specializing in research methods, polling, and analysis as an undergraduate at Wilfrid Laurier University, and his university studies culminated here at Carleton University where he completed his PhD thesis in political science under the supervision of Professor Conrad Wynn. Dr. Bricker was recruited as Director of Public Opinion Research in the office of the Prime Minister in the Mulbrunni government and then moved on to the Angus Reed Group, which later merged with Ipsos, the world's second largest market research firm with offices in 85 countries and research staff of 9,000. In addition to his work as CEO of Ipsos Global Public Affairs, Dr. Bricker serves as a board member for the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy on advisory groups from the Toronto's Economic Development Committee, the Fort York Centre, the Royal Canadian Military Institute, and is also an honorary colonel of the Queens York Rangers Regiment. Dr. Daryl Bricker received an honorary LLD from Laurier University in 2010 and is regularly called upon to give media commentary. In addition to numerous articles he's published, five best-selling books, searching for certainty, what Canadians think about almost everything, what we know, we know what you're thinking, connectology, and most recently the Big Shift, which came out last year. The Big Shift, the seismic change in Canadian politics, business, and culture and what it means for a future is co-authored with John Ibbotson. When I was a history student at the University of Toronto in the 1970s, Donald Creighton's Laurentian thesis was still very influential and helped to inform contemporary understandings of Canadian political culture. Bricker and Ibbotson present a provocative challenge to the idea of a Laurentian consensus. Does it still exist? Does the rising power of the West, distinct suburban interests and the gravitation of immigrants groups to the right, mark a paradigm shift in Canadian political culture? Or at the very least, can we say these forces present a significant challenge to the Laurentian interests that have traditionally dominated Canadian political agendas? Please join me in welcoming Daryl Bricker to the stage for his lecture, The Big Shift, The Battle Between Old Canada and New Canada. Thank you very much, Barry. Good evening. Must be a boring evening here in Ottawa. Come out to see this. It's great to be back at Carleton University. I certainly don't remember digs like this when I was a student here at Carleton. As I look at some of my professors who were here at the time, I remember having a wonderful office in the low building on the sixth floor where political science is and it was literally a broom closet. It was so small that I had just some bricks on a small desk with a chair. I had another chair in the room that if I wanted somebody to come in and sit with me, I had to open the door and put the chair in the aisle, out the hallway outside of my office so somebody could sit there because I was the SPSS and computer consultant in the department for the time that I was here. People had to come and talk to me about their computer assignments so you'd have to sit in the hall while I sat in my little office. Thank you very much for having me here tonight. I'd like to begin by thanking the Bell family. Where'd she go? There she is. Dr. Bell, thank you very much for sponsoring tonight's lecture and my alma mater, Carleton University, for asking me to deliver it. When I look at the names of those who've previously given Bell lectures, it is to say the least an intimidating set of people. I am truly humbled to be among them. In fact, one of them is actually one of my co-authors. I wrote my first book with, so it kind of brings this a little full circle as well. Tonight's a bit of a homecoming for me. As you know, I'm a Carleton graduate. I earned my PhD in political science from this place in 1989. And what you might not fully appreciate, though, is how much Carleton changed my life. Why did I come to Carleton in a way in a word, propinquity? Propinquity means physical or psychological proximity. My reasoning at the time was that if you're interested in Canadian politics and government as I was, Carleton is the only place to be. And judging by the fact that we're here tonight talking about the big shift, which was written specifically about our national political conversation, I believe I was right in that choice. Frankly, I don't know if this book would have been written if I hadn't attended Carleton. That is the absolute truth. And I also know that the career that I've enjoyed for the last 25 years definitely wouldn't have happened. So thank you very much, Carleton University, not only on my behalf, but on behalf of my wife, Nina, and my daughter, Emily, and we wouldn't have what we have today if I didn't have the good fortune of attending Carleton. Thank you very much, Carleton. So let's move on to the big shift. Whereas what one critic described is a little book that I wrote with my good friend from the Globe and Mail, John Ibbotson. The book, The Big Shift, the seismic change in Canadian politics, business, and culture, and what it means for our future. I humbly claim credit for the title, but as far as the second part of it, the subtitle, I don't think either one of us were thinking that well. It's a bit wordy and it doesn't really work. The Big Shift concept I actually do claim credit for. But let me just say that it seemed like a really good idea at the time when we wrote that subtitle. I wish we could drop it at this point. But how did the Big Shift come to be? It was born of mutual frustration. Both John and I were peaked by what we believed was a complete mischaracterization of our May 2011 national election campaign by people who we both believed should have known better. But as we shared our frustration, we came to realize that those who should have known better, in fact, did not. Why was this the case and who was responsible for losing the plot? We had an explanation. It was a group that we call in our book, The Laurentian Elite, and their shared vision of our national narrative, which we call the Laurentian Consensus. However, as our Laurentian friends have pointed out to us, they are surprised to be included in an elite group that they didn't know existed and even more surprised to be told that they share a common vision that they didn't know that they had. An explanation is clearly in order, so let's start with the elite. Who are they? From the time of Confederation until quite recently, they ran Canada. They are the political, academic, cultural media and business elites in the communities along the St. Lawrence River. On all the great issues of the day, these Laurentian elites, debated among themselves, reached a consensus and implemented that consensus. The Laurentian elite governed us and for the most part, we argue in the book, governed us very well. Canada is a great country and we have the Laurentian elite to thank for it. They guided us through two terrible wars and lost an infrastructure revolution in the 1950s that created the highways and airports we still use today. They also created a healthcare system that many Canadians see as our defining achievement as a nation. They patriated and modernized our colonial constitution and created the independent Canada that we all cherish today. Issue after issue, decade after decade, the Laurentian elite shaped the public policy arc of our nation. Its members were and are few enough that most of them know or knew each other. At first they were largely British stock and largely Protestant as well. Though any bias against French, Catholics or Jews just wasn't tolerated for long. Indeed, agreement between the French and English elites was essential and whenever it was not obtained, things went badly. They were for the most part from the upper ranks of the middle class, though the membrane was permeable. They were almost invariably small L Liberals who voted for the large L party. Indeed, the Liberal Party of Canada gave us some powerful manifestation of the Laurentian elite and their consensus. If that's the elite, what's their consensus? Today's version is based on a common set of assumptions about Canada that were a fragile nation. By the way, you can see this in all the excitement about national unity reemerging. It's like watching all these people, it's like getting the band back together, right? We're all excited. Oh my God, we can talk about national unity again because it is their animating, animating issue. I love the national unity issue. So they believe that we're a fragile nation. That the federal government's job is to bind the country together that would otherwise fall apart without their subtle hand, their subtle guidance. That the biggest challenge is keeping Quebec inside confederation and that the poorer regions must forever stay poor propped up by the richer parts of the country. That our national identity, whatever it is, must be protected from the American juggernaut and that Canada is a helpful fixer in the world, a peacekeeper, a joiner of all the best clubs. Most of all these elites assume that their version of the country is still the country and that they still run it as they always have run it in the past. Ironically, it's Canadian tolerance, the tolerance that was created by the Laurentian elite which planted the seeds of their own destruction. The cultural accommodation that was necessary for French and English Canadians to get along has made it possible for people of diverse backgrounds to live together in the Canada that we celebrate today. Open door immigration combined with multicultural tolerance represents the finest achievement of the Laurentian elite. It's also helped to do them in. If the Laurentian elite and their consensus is the past, what's the future? To me, the story can be found in numbers. What's perplexing to me is that these numbers are not in dispute and are all easy to find. But for some reason, maybe it's denial, nostalgia, maybe a little bit of laziness, we pay little attention to them. Let's start with our first number. And that number is 1.7. 1.7 is the average number of children a Canadian woman has today during her fertile years. To have a sustainable, healthy population we need at least 2.1. That's one to replace you, one to replace your partner, and a little bit extra for those who won't or can't have kids. At just 1.7, we're almost half a baby short. Why are birth rates dropping in Canada, but also in so many other countries? The baby decline is driven by changing choices for families created by a combination of urbanization and education. On the farm, children are an economic asset. In the city, kids are an expense. Educated and urbanized parents have fewer kids. And Canada is a very urbanized country. Over 80% of us live in cities and towns. In fact, the last decade in which half of us lived in rural areas was the 1920s. Having a low birth rate is a huge challenge. Let's take the case of Japan. Its birth rate is just 1.4. There are more than half a baby short. In 2012, Japan's population was just over 127 million. By 2015, it will drop by 25%. And the remaining Japanese are getting older every year. An aging population is an expensive population. More money is needed for an increasing healthcare and pension expenses. And since most people are counting on selling their home to pay for their retirement, who will be the homebuyers in Japan? The effects of birth rates are shown and I'm going to show you just a couple of figures because I think I have an obligation to show you some statistics since that's what I do. Sorry about that. For those of you who wanted to see something more interesting, but this is the Canadian population in 1961. So the year I was born, it's the last year of the baby boom. Up the center of the charter, ages. So if you read along it, that's the number of people who are at that age in the Canadian population in 1961. Men are on the left and women are on the right. This is a healthy, expanding population. There are lots of children being born to support and replace the people at the top. We're falling off at the top of the pyramid. And I won't say why they're falling off. I'll let you come to that conclusion on your own. Here's our population in 2011. Our pyramid has become a vase shaped like this. The big bulge you see in the middle is the baby boom. You'll also notice it bulges out more in the middle than at the bottom of the pyramid. This is a Japanese problem. This is what 1.7 looks like. These two charts show a potential population crisis. Yet Canada has the fastest growing population in the G8. Why is this? By the way, take a look at Germany, Japan, and Russia in terms of their population growth. They're slipping back. Why is this happening in Canada? In a word, immigration. Canada now tracks about a quarter million immigrants a year. Every year. This is more per capita than any other major developed country. To put this into context, and just think about this. Put this into context. It's a new Toronto every decade that comes to this country. A new Toronto every decade. And we've been seeing this last level of immigration for at least two decades. So last 20 years, two new Toronto's have moved to Canada. And there's no sign it will stop. In 2010, the UN said that 214 million people lived outside of their country of birth. But only 3% of them are refugees. So it's not that people are moving all over the place because they're being forced out of their home countries due to war or famine. They're moving for economic advantage. This is the emergence of a new mobile global middle class. They're ready to move and they have the skills to hit the ground running. Canada's big advantage is that they see us as a successful and stable country. And they also see us as tolerant of those coming from outside of our founding cultures. Which makes the Quebec issue with the values charter so problematic for the province of Quebec. They have a birth rate of 1.72. They need immigrants. Appearing intolerant to the people you need is a problem for you. And as a result, the Quebec population is not attracting their proportion of immigrants. Just like the other parts of the country are actually Atlantic Canada isn't, but particularly Toronto in the west. And we'll get into that in just a second. But who can we thank for this? Well, it's the Laurentian consensus. They created this possibility for an immigrant, an open immigration and the level of tolerance that we have in our country. It's their greatest achievement, as I said before. Our new immigrants are definitely outside of the frowning English, French and Aboriginal cultures. Where are they coming from? Here's a comparison of immigration sources in Canada for 1970 and 2010. Let's take a second and just take a look at that. I could have given you 1980 and you'd still see that the UK was at the top of the list. In fact, the number one immigrant group today wasn't even on the chart in 1970. And as far as the Chinese immigrants are concerned there, the Chinese that were coming over in 1970 were all coming basically from Hong Kong. Now it's less than 0.01% that are coming from Hong Kong. They're all coming from the mainland. As you can see, our new immigrants don't look like our founding cultures or even like previous waves of immigrants. They're mostly from the Philippines, India and China. They are less Atlantic and more Pacific in their orientation and that's a key point. They have a Pacific orientation and they are much more likely to be visible minorities. Returning to the Laurentian vision of Canada, immigration is really challenging the idea that we're comprised of three major population groups. The English, the French and Aboriginal communities. And that these groups will forever define our culture. Of the three founding cultures, the one that's having the hardest time maintaining its position in Canada today are Aboriginal Canadians. There's just over 600,000 status Indians in Canada today and which doesn't include the Métis in New York people as we all know since that's in a certain amount of dispute right now, but only about 300,000 actually live on reserves. What's about the equivalent of one year's worth of immigration? Think about that. One year's worth of immigration. Yes, the Aboriginal population is young and has a higher birth rate than the general population, but they start from a small base and their growth will slow over time with increased urbanization and education. The Aboriginal birth rate used to be as high as six. It's now down to just over two. So that's going to be changing as well. If there's a deal for the Aboriginal community, now's the time to get it because your population is going to shrink, shrink, shrink. A similar predicament faces the other two major heritage groups, the English and the French. Their respective share of the Canadian population is also shrinking. What does this mean for important national goals? For example, like bilingualism, which I always enjoy when I come here to Ottawa. Truth be told, only 17.5% of Canadians report that they can carry on a conversation in French and English. 17.5, less than 1 in 5. My research shows that the number of Canadians who believe that they can do their job equally well in the other official language is actually less than half that. It's about 8. Think about that. 8% of the population to fuel our federal public service. Bilingualism hit a wall in 2011 because new immigrants who mostly adopt English as their preferred official language are driving our population growth. How are we going to maintain a bilingual public service in Canada that's capable of providing services in both official languages from coast to coast to coast? Do we really believe that a public service drawn from such a narrow segment of the population can adequately serve Canada in the future? No wonder the Harper government had such a hard time finding bilingual Supreme Court justices and a bilingual auditor general. It's only going to get harder in the future. They're drawing from 8% of the population. Much of this wouldn't matter if immigrants choosing Canada decided to move equally across the country, but that's not happening. They're moving to where the jobs are. That's the Toronto suburbs, especially the 905 area code. So that's the telephone area code around the city of Toronto and Western Canada. So while Canada used to be an Atlantic country, it is increasingly a Pacific country. That's because most immigrants are now coming from Pacific nations and our population is shifting west. And this is what this looks like. Let's take a second and contemplate that. If I put the prairies up for just the last 10 years, you'd see they're moving way ahead as well. Atlantic Canada shrinking, Quebec is shrinking, Ontario, the growth is slowing down. Most of the growth in the country is in the prairies in British Columbia, especially Alberta. To me, this is the big shift in a single slide. And there are huge implications to this. Let's take a look at our major cities just for a second. Now outside of a war, that number of people moving to a place like Calgary is a massive displacement of population for no other reason than people seeking economic advantage. But take a look at Montreal and take a look at Calgary. By the way, percentage of the population that's foreign born in Montreal? 20. Percentage of the population that's foreign born in Toronto? 50. Percentage in Calgary? Pushing into the 30s now. Halifax? 5. Ottawa? 18. I described Ottawa, turning into Colonial Williamsburg. Not attracting a lot of immigrants. Still in a place where you kind of hang on to this tradition of bilingual people who are running things, a public service that never circulates. It's the same people all the time. It's becoming like an artifact of what Canada used to be. Because the rest of the country is moving on. I hope that was it for my slides. No more reading of slides, you listen to me now. I've proved my point. So where does this bring us as a nation? A country that was once white is becoming brown. A country that was once part of the Atlantic world is becoming part of the Pacific world. The provinces and groups that matter the most don't matter as much anymore. The country has, centre has shifted west and power has shifted with it. In fact, power is now shared by two groups in Canada. Western Canadians and immigrant middle class residents of the 905. I'm going to talk about Canadian politics in just a second, but I want you to keep that last group, immigrant middle class residents of the 905 in mind through all of this. Because if you can't win them, you cannot win now. They decide our elections. One area where you can see the impact of these population shifts is our national politics. We have a nationalist election system based on representation by population. All our political science students here know that. Regions that have the most people get the most seats in the House of Commons. That's the way it works. To understand the impact of our shifting population, let's go back to the federal election of May 2011. That spawned this book. To John and me, that election was a fracture in time, like BC versus AD. It was the birth of a new Canadian politics. We all know what happened. The Conservatives won a majority. But it would be wrong to attribute this result simply to the combination of Conservative tactical brilliance or viciousness The impact of Jack Leighton's smiling face are the dark, dark tragedy of the Liberal campaign. That's the Laurentian perspective on what happened. Rather, this was all about the emergence of a new, decisive coalition in Canadian politics. This new coalition is comprised of middle-class voters in the 905 who are increasingly new immigrants and Western and rural voters. What brought together the Conservative coalition? The answer is that their message of low taxes, sound finances, and economic growth, combined with an emphasis on law and order, convinced a large slice of 905 immigrant voters that they shared the same values with rural voters and voters in the West. They brought together Old Canada and New Canada. So New Canada's suburban, immigrant, multicultural, middle-class, found common cause with Old Canada, the white and often rural people descended from the original settler cultures. Now think for a moment about what you know about Canadian politics. It's all about winning votes in Quebec and Ontario. Right? That's how you win. If you can do that, you win a comfortable majority government. Not so much anymore. The Conservatives won a comfortable majority in 2011 with only five seats in Quebec. In fact, Quebec has not voted for a national government since 1988. Now let's fast forward to 2015 in our next federal election. There are currently 308 seats in our House of Commons. Before the next election, another 30 will be added for a total of 338. All but three of these 30 seats are in Ontario and the West, where we've seen the largest growth in population. That's how our system works. Clearly the new coalition has the potential to be even more decisive next time out, leaving aside what you're seeing in the polling right now. In fact, I would argue that Stephen Harper and the Conservatives could win a majority with a smaller percentage of the vote the next time, because most of these seats benefit them because they're in the suburbs. And I know everybody goes crazy right now about how well Justin Trudeau is doing. He's got about like five point lead, but when you really take a look at his numbers, what you see is that he's in the 50s in Atlantic Canada, in the 50s. I know incumbency is a huge factor in those particularly in rural elections, so they're not going to win all 32 seats. Remember, there's only 32 seats in Atlantic Canada. There's more than that around the city of Toronto. So what's he going to win there? 20? Let's go to Quebec. John Cratchin won 29 seats, I believe, at his High Watermark in 2000. Somebody can correct me on that if you've got better numbers than me, but it was around that, I seem to remember. Three-way shootout right now in the province of Quebec. The BQ is coming back a little bit, particularly as a result of the provincial election. The Liberals and their NDP are both in the game. So what's Trudeau going to win? 30? 35? Let's give them 35. Okay, 20 plus 35 equals 55. Let's go to Ontario. Ontario, the Conservatives and the Liberals are basically tied right now. The Liberals look stronger because they're winning a lot of votes in downtown Toronto, where they're already winning. How many seats is he going to win in Ontario? 40, 50? Let's add it up. 20, 35, 55. Let's give them 45. Whatever that adds up to, 90. He's got to find another 80 seats in order to win a majority election. Can you tell me where the 80 are? I can't think of where they are. He's got a tough row to hoe. And Stephen Harper's vote just got more efficient because of those 30 new seats that were added to the House of Commons. It's going to be a competitive election. Not saying he's going to win, but I'm saying that the odds-makers are laying it on the wrong odds right now because they're not looking at what I just told you. They're looking at national polling, which doesn't mean anything. As we say in the big shift, the new Conservative Coalition isn't about one election. The Conservatives have the potential to be to the 21st century what the Liberal Party was to the 20th to the 20th century, the National Governing Party. As long as immigrants keep moving to this country, as long as they keep moving to the 905 and as long as they keep moving to the west, that's the trend. Each week, a lifetime in politics, since we submitted the final draft of the big shift to our editors at Harper Collins. During that time, a troublesome problem involving several Conservative senators and their expenses has metastasized into a life-threatening scandal that could prove fatal to Stephen Harper as Prime Minister. Even as the Liberal Party of Justin Trudeau enjoys levels of popular support, not since Sincere and John Crutch stepped down in 2003. I mean, the Liberals have not been that high since that point. So it's right and proper that these events have led some politicians, pundits, professors, and others to ask whether the thesis we advanced in the big shift remains valid. How can we say that the Conservative Party will be to the 21st century with the Liberal Party, Canada's natural Governing Party, west of the 20th century when the Conservatives appeared doomed to defeat in the next election? As I've already said, I'm not so sure that they're doomed to defeat based on how the numbers actually look. We believe that our thesis remains as valid today as it was when we wrote it and will remain valid for a long time to come. The big shift that we talk about refers to the massive shift in Canada's population from east to west. It refers as well to the enormous influx over the past two decades of immigrants from Asia and the Pacific region who are more Conservative in their outlook than European settlers of the 19th and 20th century and who have settled in large numbers in the suburban cities surrounding Toronto. Their Conservative values unite those immigrants and other suburban voters in Ontario with voters in rural Canada and the west. Together, these voters form a new Conservative coalition, one that is available to any politician who can legitimately appeal to their concerns. An overriding focus on the economy, a drive for smaller government, and an emphasis on law and order. It's a really simple agenda. Really simple. Now, I know everybody's talking about the middle class right now. I don't know why the Liberals have become obsessed with this but they have become obsessed with it. I'll just give you a little polling data to help you think this one through. So you go and you ask Canadians which party would do the best understands the middle class, NDP by six. Then you go and ask them which party would do the best job of taking care of the middle class if they got into power, NDP by two. Then you ask them, here's a series of government programs that we could bring into place to help the middle class. Or would you prefer a tax cut? Tax cut wins six to four. Sounds like a very convoluted message set to deal with for me. Very difficult issue set to deal with for me. I actually like the economy, smaller government, and an emphasis on law and order. If you can't sell somebody on being able to do that better than the current Conservatives with 905 immigrant voters, you're going to have a hard time beating them. Even to the extent that people are dissatisfied with Stephen Harper right now. By the way, government approval levels still over 40. I know based on doing this on an international basis we looked at 200 elections, and I think more than 30 countries at Epsos because we can do that. And we found that governments that had approval levels of 40 to 45 percent when it was an incumbent that was running again, 180 percent of the time. That doesn't mean they're going to win a majority. It might be a minority, but they still the process favors incumbents. So as I said, it's going to be a competitive election. We also say that this new coalition, especially in suburban Toronto immigrant part isn't available exclusively to the Conservatives. And this is the part that needs to be really emphasized, I think, for the other two parties. It can also be tapped by the Liberals or the NDP. If they can find a way to legitimately appeal to this group's core values. It remains our view that, given the nature of the values at play, these voters match up more easily with politicians on the right. You want to know why Rob Ford won in Toronto? This is why. And here's the truth about Rob Ford. Say what you can about his personal behavior or whatever. The election in which he won he drove up voter turnout by 10 points over the John Tory David Miller election which was the competitive election that took place before that and won half the vote. He just didn't win. He smoked George Smitherman. Wasn't even close. Is he going to win again? No. Although 40% of the population still approve of his agenda. When you put him on a ballot with anybody else he loses, Olivia Chow is actually looking pretty strong right now. But the truth is that small agenda, taking care of taxpayers' money, based on the size of government, that agenda still sells. And if Rob Ford didn't have all these personal behavior issues going on right now, he would probably win in a walk. Because that's the new Canada, folks. Not necessarily something that wins in Ottawa but it wins in Toronto. And Toronto's bigger. Didn't say it was better so it was bigger. Toronto was a great town to live in. We also argue that there is a nascent progressive coalition emerging that diligently assembled could defeat the Conservatives. But we continue to believe that as long as the progressive vote remains split between the NDP and the Liberals, especially if the New Democrats continue to enjoy a new floor of about 25% where they are consistently, which is higher than their former ceiling. They used to never get over 20. I've been doing this for a long time. The Conservative Party of Canada has a natural advantage going into any given election. Opposition is divided. Tories have a better vote with the growing part of the voter poll. To be clear, nowhere in the big shift do we say that the Conservative Party must win every election going forward, including the next one. Every election is a contest filled with variables, which is what makes them so much fun to watch. I mean, anything can happen. Look what's happening in Quebec now. What I would say though is that the demographic shifts that are transforming our politics give the advantage to the Conservatives today just as previous shifts once gave the advantage to the Liberals. We believe that the Conservative Coalition is now the largest, most coherent, and most stable of any available. And that coalition will only grow stronger as Canada's population continues to shift west and more new arrivals from China, India, and the Philippines flood our cities. Some critics have chastised us for what they say as a hint of triumphalism. I don't even know what that means necessarily, but in the big shift, a celebration of this new increasingly Conservative Canada. It is true that we believe our country is stronger and more confident that at any time in our history we are also aware of the new fault lines that threaten to undermine our national purpose. The conflict between the city and the suburbs, between east of what we'll call the Ottawa River Curtain and the west. Between aspiring new arrivals and sometimes resentful native-born people, we alert readers to these fault lines and warn about their potential consequences throughout the book. These are the new agenda items for the future as the country continues to transform. Finally, while we assert that the influence of the Laurentian elites as we call the traditional governing class of Central Canada is on the wane, we also greatly admire the country that they built. The debt of every Canadian to those who shaped this nation over the span of nearly 150 years is tremendous. They set up what we're now enjoying today, but as I said before, with also their embracing of liberal immigration and multiculturalism, they created the plant of the seeds of their own demise. Lawyers advise their clients to try and reach a settlement before the case goes to the jury because juries are unpredictable. So are voters. Boy, don't we know that. Anybody who did polling in British Columbia knows that for sure. Guilty a start. The jury is still out on the election of 2015. What we believe that the big shift catalogues the forces that will be at play, we strongly advise that you pay attention to them where you risk being misled by the old narratives and home truths that no longer apply. Thank you. Well, on behalf of Dr. Ruth Bell and Carleton University, I'd like to thank Daryl Bricker again for presenting a challenging and very, very important set of ideas. We're the addition, I think, to the line of Bell Lecture speakers, and we have two guests as a token of our appreciation. One from Dr. Bell, her book, Be a Nice Girl. Well, I think we need to give them a round of applause. I've always wanted to be a nice girl myself, so this is good. And this is from the Faculty of Public Affairs. Well, thank you very much. A real pleasure to be here tonight, folks. Thank you, everybody, for taking the time to come out. I look forward to talking to you in the reception. Thank you.