Allan Gregg (“Quebec’s Final Victory,” February) implies that allowing provincial governments to take matters into their own hands is an ominous development. Perhaps we have lived in a paternalistic land for so long that many of us fail to recognize its influences, like the notion that governments always know best. The devolution of power, out from the centre, is to be embraced, not feared.
Real power still resides with the people, a point we forget at our peril. We need more referenda and citizen initiatives, more scrutiny and openness. The more we participate, the better off we will be. Mr. Gregg still propagates that father knows best. In reality, we all know best, and need to flex our democratic muscle to prove it.
Joe Bezanson
Vancouver, BC
Allan Gregg’s article assumes that a strong federal government is a good thing. But there is no proof of this. If this country truly believes in diversity, we must allow for local authority to manage that diversity. My own preference would be the devolution of power from the nation-state to the city-state, a more organic and manageable form of government. We would still require federal powers to set currency and environmental policies, but even duties such as defence could be managed by local governments, with some federal co-ordination. Canada, of course, would not be the same country, if “country” is even the right word for it. But our part of the globe would be more exciting, generate more ideas, and create a political environment where people’s voices are heard.
Steve Papagiannis
Brampton, Ontario
Canada is one of the most decentralized countries in the world, and yet few of us have any personal or collective knowledge of this topic to draw upon. As our provinces nation-build at the expense of the country as a whole, the danger of this trend elicits little discussion in the media. We must find a new group of national champions to reframe the debate around the balkanization of this country (nicely expressed by Leif Parsons’s illustrations).
Paul Martin’s proposal to direct federal funding to Canadian cities, circumventing provincial jurisdiction, seems a cause for hope. This is a creative way to address excessive provincial power, and suggests Martin is not completely out of touch. Yet, while the cities generally liked Martin’s idea, decentralists knew this was an attack on provincial power, and spoke out against it. The solution may be a campaign to decentralize provincial power. If provincial power is better because it brings government closer to the people, then let us bring more power to the community level.
D.T. DeWitt
Vancouver, BC
Back To Africa
Lawrence Hill suggests black Americans have created a psychological distance from Africa by defining themselves more by their nationality than by their race (“Is Africa’s Pain Black America’s Burden?,” February). But nationalism proves an equally arbitrary and destructive force, a point Mr. Hill neglects to mention. In W.E.B. Du Bois’s book The Souls of Black Folk, he suggests that racism causes people to see their world through a veil of illusion. Both racism and nationalism construct an arbitrary dichotomy between two groups of people for the benefit of the dominant group. Where once Du Bois’s was a veil of racism, it is now a veil of nationalism. So long as that veil exists, Africa will always be a problem.
Steven Gorman
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