Perfecting the Union Versus Packing It In

Taking off from Prime Minister Harper’s craven 2006 motion — the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada — the Parti and Bloc Québécois have accepted Ottawa’s deal: Quebec will achieve independence incrementally, one piece of legislation at a time. No more federal “scandals,” whether Liberal (Adscam) or Conservative (Mulroney-Schreiber) to plague the province-cum-country. Harper, hardly a federalist, is fine with this, and as the split will occur not by the wielding of a blunt axe or the asking of a straightforward question, no one in particular will be to blame or be able to claim victory. And to this quiet but inexorable dismantling, the roc says, “Who cares? We’re tired of Quebec anyway. Give it whatever constitutional recognition it wants and be done with it.”

During the Auto Pact years, Ontario, building cars and car parts and being rather uninteresting, carved out a niche for itself as Confederation’s broker, enabler of federal programs, and provincial champion of national unity. Today, by virtue of having a Liberal premier, provincial Conservatives morphing into federal government attack dogs, and a once-thriving manufacturing sector no longer of interest, Ontario has become Ottawa’s whipping boy. The outside response to this cleavage and reversal of history — “It’s every crumb for himself!” — is striking.

Moving west, when wheat was a beggar’s food and there was little future on the farm, Manitoba and Saskatchewan romanticized the past: Winnipeg as the gateway to the Prairies, Saskatchewan as the birthplace of universal health care. To dull the malaise across a vast panorama that delivered noteworthy sunsets but little cash, Ottawa would build a museum or buy a ploughshare. But today, as the planet warms and ethanol is king, as fields of barley and oats are turned into corn in the US (and India and China move to bread and pasta), the price of wheat marches in lockstep with that other plentiful Canadian commodity, oil, and on the Prairies the central government disappears with the setting sun. Especially in Saskatchewan, the go-it-alone mentality is bubbling to the surface: “We’ve got a net migration back home, uranium to burn, tar sands, and wheat for export. And it’s all ours, baby!”

Alberta has its man in Ottawa and, like Quebec, is delighted by Harper’s downloading of all responsibilities beyond defence and, perhaps, foreign affairs. On global warming, newly elected Premier Ed Stelmach has heeded the prime minister’s prescription — the provinces are free to do what they want — and he’s doing as little as possible. “Alberta First” has become the province’s unofficial motto and mantra. This leading edge of disunion has produced its opposite in clear-thinking reformers like former premier Peter Lougheed, but while galloping development might have been slowed, the results of the February election tell the story of provincial drift: Conservatives, 72; Liberals, 9; ndp, 2. As the monster trucks leave the bitumen pits, Albertans wedded to Canada can only watch and despair.

The outlier in this era of provincial solipsism is British Columbia, but Premier Gordon Campbell’s carbon tax and hard schedules on reducing greenhouse gas emissions will be negated by Alberta. And so, as the skies grey and national institutions — health care, the cbc, equalization, etc. — are shredded, privatized, or not considered, the verdict is in: the disunion of our union trumps the occasional positive provincial move. As Canadians watch the US drama unfold, it is less the absence of an Obama-like figure that forestalls our own appetite for an election, and more that we’ve become voyeurs rather than voyageurs, grabbing what we can while we can, and looking on as the idea of national purpose is chucked into the ashcan of history. In this era of provincial sovereignty and greed, images of Canada are hard to conjure, and you cannot vote for that which exists in name only.