—Liberal Member of Parliament Ken Dryden
Support people rather than places.
“—From Bronze to Gold: A Blueprint for Canadian Leadership in a Transforming World,” Canadian Council of Chief Executives
I
n real estate, location is everything; in politics, it is timing (the election call, the quick riposte). Of course, just as real-estate agents often fail to mention the second most important feature of any house—who the neighbours are—in politics, clever timing is often the result of prepared spontaneity (i.e. “fluffing” the candidates) and remaining silent about key facts or intentions. No need to mention the twenty-year-old roof. Let them ask.While the brilliance of Stephen Harper’s election campaign rested on the slogan “Stand Up for Canada,” now that the house has been bought and the dust has settled our new prime minister has a problem: his internal clock is set to a different era. Slogans aside, as Canadians consider their nation-building options for the twenty-first century, Harper’s concept of our state remains rooted in the nineteenth century. Eschewing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the magnanimity of redistributed wealth across a vast and variegated landscape, and the current pressing question of a new deal for cities, Harper sees his job as resuscitating the 1867 British North America Act. In dealing with the supposed “fiscal imbalance” between Ottawa and the provinces—framed as ballooning federal surpluses versus escalating provincial deficits—expect him to give us first a history lesson and then a magical carpet ride backward in time.
Even in our ahistorical age, constitutional experts and historians continue to debate the precise meaning of the bna Act—whether First Nations peoples were properly accounted for; whether Confederation would have happened when it did without the US Civil War (1861-1865); whether it is an Enlightenment document at all. The arguments pro and con fill the copy inches of books and the talk of lectures. But on the key issue of the division of powers, Harper’s interpretation is clear: Section 91 of the bna Act establishes that Ottawa is in charge of “peace, order, and good government” (or pogg); Section 92 grants the provinces the rest (and no acronym could possibly encapsulate such a voluminous category).
“To tax is to govern,” as the saying goes, but, like democracy itself, pogg is not something the average citizen can put in a wheelbarrow and take home. We cannot taste or feel pogg and, even at the best of times, it is difficult to see or measure. The “rest” (Section 92) are provincial matters—everything from schooling to (now) daycare, natural resources, jurisdiction over cities, and health care; they are easily quantifiable and have direct bearing on people’s lives. So, in Harper’s mind the syllogism is simple: pogg is important, but it is only a concept; in real terms, it is a cipher (in the arithmetical sense), meaning that it denotes no specific amount and is used simply to occupy space. Therefore, the way to ensure “peace, order, and good government” is to relieve Ottawa of the burden of collecting taxes on all matters beyond the costs associated with defending our borders and talking to Mr. Bush.
Put more simply, the federal House of Commons should not be a “tax room” at all. Rather, thirteen smaller rooms —the provincial and territorial legislatures—should tax and govern the nation. Harper’s vision is to set the provinces free. Free to tax, free to spend, free to do as they will, and free to be accountable. And in this application of nineteenth-century wisdom (the bna Act, like the Bible, herein interpreted literally), Harper dreams of a different state of nature: endless competition between the provinces, or rather, between the people who happen to inhabit these constellations. He dreams of the regions playing British bulldog with little or no federal parenting, some successful in bagging recruits—head offices, construction magnates, private health care clinics—and for the others: well, too bad...
“S
tand Up for Canada” masks just how complicated Harper truly is. For years, he travelled over rough terrain, navigating the troubled waters of the Reform Party, then the National Citizens’ Coalition, then the Canadian Alliance. He has been bruised and battered but Harper has also been absolutely resolute in his pursuit of Olympic gold: the prime minister’s chair. Now, having achieved this lofty station, since he sees his job simply as providing pogg—an existential concept full, as it were, of non-being—he is basically saying, “There is nothing to do... beyond national defence and, perhaps, foreign affairs.”But before our reluctant prime minister can orchestrate his own demise, he has some work to do and games to play. The January election awarded Harper a Conservative minority with regional holes. Most tellingly, Canada’s three major cities—Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver—had opted out, choosing only Liberal or New Democratic Party representatives. Unbowed and knowing that in politics timing is currency, with Parliament in recess, the moment was ripe for some shadowy business.
