First Things: 'The managerial class in Canada is much more powerful than that in the U.S., for several reasons. First, the managerial class makes up a much larger share of Canada’s population, because far more Canadians go to college. Whereas 51.9 percent of Americans between the ages of 25–34 have tertiary education, in Canada it is almost 65 percent. While America’s elites are decentralized (Wall Street and Silicon Valley are very different), Canada’s elites are concentrated in the Laurentian corridor of Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal. And there is a revolving door between the managerial institutions. Since Lester Pearson, prime minister from 1963 to 1968, every leader of the Liberal party has begun his career as either a civil servant, academic, professional party hack, Bay Street lawyer, or leader of one of Canada’s Laurentian “continental corporations”—or as the son of one of these. These institutions receive generous federal funding. So does the Canadian media, which is now financially dependent on the federal government. Because these institutions are regionally concentrated and rely on symbiotic relationships with one another, Canada’s managerial classes hold hegemonic political power....
'...These losers in the continental intra-elite competitive game are the people running the feebler Canadian counterparts of prestigious American institutions. Because the upper tiers of Canadian society have been saturated with them for several generations, standards have dropped. But Canadian elites have not noticed. Lacking self-awareness, they become more parochial than the unenlightened classes they scorn. As one would expect of Janissaries, Canadian elites are still determined to sound like their American counterparts. Consequently, they punch down with more zeal. Imagine a national elite composed of less successful versions of Sarah Jeong: They all mock the lower-class whites, but do not get jobs at the New York Times. That’s Canada’s ruling class. '
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