Western Producer staff
If history is a guide, the apparent rush by English Canadian political leaders to try to re-model Canada to satisfy Quebec is unlikely to succeed.
Compromises will be made, responsibility will move from Ottawa to the provinces, decentralizing an already- weak federal state even more.
In the process, there is a danger the core of what Canadian patriots love about the country will be lost – the knowledge that there are national standards and a national vision that is grander than a collection of more limited provincial visions.
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And in the end, if the last 35 years taught us anything, Quebec nationalists will reject any Canadian compromise as not enough. Their country, they believe, is just around the corner, after the next vote or the one after that or the one after that. It is an old, old story.
“I expected to find a contest between a government and a people. I found two nations warring in the bosom of a single state.” Lord Durham, governor-in-chief of British North America, wrote those famous words in 1839 as part of a report which led to the 1841 union of Quebec and Ontario as Canada East and Canada West.
He didn’t know the half of it.
One hundred and fifty-six years later, those two nations are still at war in the bosom of the Canadian state.
Three decades of trying to mould Canada into a nation that reconciles the interests of Canadian nationalists and Quebec sovereigntists have failed.
The battle lines between the two visions never have been more firmly drawn as they are after the Oct. 30 Quebec referendum.
Now, Canadian politicians from outside Quebec appear poised to ignore Durham’s wisdom while racing for nation-saving compromises.
The federation, of course, evolves. Part of the evolution will be a shift of spending power from Ottawa, with its debt burden, to the provinces.
But the premiers, egged on by a prime minister desperate not to let the country break up during his watch, will be asked to do more than merely accept new powers. They will be asked to give Quebec some special recognition in the federation, extra powers or constitutional status that will breath life into the traditional demand for “distinct society” recognition.
On this point, for all their compromising words, many English Canadian premiers will balk at the prospect of what the Conservatives once tried to sell as “asymmetrical federalism” – different powers for different provinces.
The Reform party, English Canada’s opposition party, will have none of it, insisting that Quebec is equal or gone.
The separatist Quebec government, in power for at least three more years, has indicated it is not interested in reforms that will make Canada work.
So, there is a question Canadians should ponder before they let their leaders negotiate the devolution of power in the name of efficiency and accommodating Quebec. Is there a Canadian core they wish to preserve, other than a Canada that includes Quebec at any cost?
If there is, now is the time to define and preserve it rather than allow it to be carved up.
