Laurentian elite

The Laurentian elite, also referred to as the Laurentian Consensus, is a Canadian political term used to refer to individuals in the upper class of society who live along the St. Lawrence River and watershed in major Central Canadian cities such as Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto, an area which represents a significant portion of Canada’s population.^[1] The term has been used to describe the belief that a general governing political consensus existed in Canada due to the influence of the Laurentian elite from Confederation until the early twenty-first century.^[2]

The term is generally attributed to John Ibbitson, who wrote extensively about the Laurentian elite following the 2011 Canadian federal election (though he has shared the credit for coining it with University of Toronto academic David Cameron). Ibbitson later expanded his coverage in the book The Big Shift: The Seismic Change in Canadian Politics, Business, and Culture and What It Means for Our Future published in 2013 by Darrell Bricker and Ibbitson, in which the authors argue that the Laurentian Consensus is on course to be replaced by a new political coalition consisting of Western Canada and suburban Ontario.^[3] The term has since been adopted by other journalists and political commentators as a shorthand for the Central Canadian establishment.