Reform MPs propose massive cuts in federal power

Western Producer staff

The Reform Party last week gave Canadians a glimpse of the kind of Canada it would create. In the final week of the agonizing debate over whether Quebec would vote to stay or go, Reform MPs tried to get the government to promise massive decentralization.

Like some provincial premiers, Reform used the panic over Quebec’s separation threat to promote their own agenda of shifting power from national elites to provincial or local elites.

They said it would show Quebecers that Canada is willing to give up all the powers Quebec needs. Still, Quebec would not be special. All provinces would feast similarly on Ottawa’s powers.

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Reform’s 20-point proposal to “modernize and decentralize Canada” looks more like a booster machine for the centrifugal forces that already have made Canada one of the world’s most decentralized federations. Reform, if it had its way, would make Ottawa and the national government pretty much irrelevant in most program areas that affect Canadians.

It would remove much of Ottawa’s influence over health, welfare and social services programs. It would have Ottawa give up large blocks of its taxing power to the provinces.

It would give the provinces “exclusive control” over many policy areas that now are concurrent federal-provincial jurisdictions, including agriculture.

It would give provinces, rather than Ottawa, the right to appoint Supreme Court judges, other than the chief justice. The provinces would appoint directors to the Bank of Canada.

Ottawa would be barred by legislation from spending in areas of jurisdiction deemed provincial.

Reformers argued that this reduction in federal power is being called for by Canadians who want government returned to local levels and who want Ottawa to get out of debt.

Coincidentally, Reform leader Preston Manning implied, it would show Quebecers they could get as close as they need to independence without leaving Canada.

It really is a vision of a country that is not a country at all, but a collection of semi-autonomous regions held together by history, a common currency, an armed forces and a foreign and trade policy that, while administered federally, would presumably represent the collective demands of the provinces. It would create a Canada that is not greater than the sum of its parts, a modern incarnation of Joe Clark’s “community of communities.”

This would not be an effective Quebec appeasement policy.

It would not be good enough for Quebec’s separatists, who dream only of their own country, nor for nationalists who want special recognition within Canada. So it must be aimed at Canadians outside Quebec.

When Reformers debate the final version of this policy at their convention next June in Vancouver, the underlying question they should ponder is whether Canadians really believe the only way Canada can survive is as a loose association of principalities with a “national vision” that is little more than a patchwork of the aspirations and prejudices of member jurisdictions.