Rules chucked
By LINK BYFIELD
As Canada heads full-tilt into another political war over the price of gas, it's interesting to note the breathtaking East-West difference in attitudes.
"Harper cannot be a winner," writes Ottawa Sun columnist Val Sears in the piece that appears on this page, "as long as his national policies are devised in Alberta, that porcine province with little connection to the rest of the country."
In this one (I hope) careless sentence Sears demonstrates (a) his ignorance of who Albertans are, and (b) his utter contempt for our province.
On the same day Sears column appeared in Ottawa, Vancouver columnist Barbara Yaffe sang the praises of a separate nation consisting of Alberta and B.C.
Yaffe is no angry redneck.
She's an urban left-liberal "moderate" who has lived and worked all over the country.
Though she ends her column with the standard disclaimer ("I am not a separatist"), she describes the nation of Alberta/B.C. in the most glowing terms: "Blissfully unilingual," "topnotch Pacific ports and network of universities," "eminently viable," complementary economies, etc., etc.
Now I'm not a separatist any more than Yaffe (or, for that matter, our new Governor General from Quebec).
You don't break up your country just to get a raise in pay. But it makes you wonder: what would justify it?
Suppose the government --the federal government --changed all the rules. Would that justify secession? Yes it would. And as it happens, the government has done just that.
Canada was designed as a non-centralized federal state in 1867, and remained so until Pearson and Trudeau centralized social, cultural and economic policy in the 1960s.
All Ottawa was supposed to run was the army, foreign affairs, currency and the Post Office.
Civil rights, language and culture, health care, welfare, education, economic development, housing, civic infrastructure -- all these were assigned to provincial governments.
Why?
So that different regional cultures and values could be preserved, and to maintain a strong connection in people's minds between rights and responsibilities, between what we want and what we can afford.
The Liberals convinced people it made more sense for Ottawa to fund these things and move massive amounts of money around the country, through Equalization, EI, CPP, national medicare and many other programs.
All of it was a direct repudiation of the principle on which the provinces united in 1867, and the terms on which other provinces (B.C. in 1871, Alberta in 1905) joined later.
The final blow fell with the Charter of Rights in 1982, which transferred power over civil rights and social policy from our elected legislatures to the judges appointed by Ottawa.
Nowhere were these changes resisted more strenuously than in Alberta, starting with E.C. Manning and continuing through Lougheed and Getty.
Invariably, all such arguments go back to the Constitution. It can't be avoided. Canadians flee in horror at the mere mention of the word. Premiers cite the "Charlottetown referendum disaster" as their excuse for not trying, as though it happened last month and not 13 years ago.
This refusal to face reality will not save us from falling apart politically and losing ground economically, both of which are happening.
It's significant that two of the three most prosperous nations in the world, Switzerland and the U.S., are also the most democratic and the most constitutionally self-disciplined.
(Incidentally, the other most-prosperous nation is not Canada, it's Norway. We're actually about 16th.)
Premier Ralph Klein has failed big-time in the constitutional area.
Instead of mugging as the Lone Ranger and saying "Keep your hands off our cash," he should be asking the legislature to enact a constitutional resolution limiting federal spending, curbing the new political powers of the courts, and reforming Parliament with a Triple-E Senate.
After Alberta passes that amendment, the rest of Canada has three years to consider it.
If the amendment dies, Albertans could then be legally asked in a referendum (under the federal Clarity Act) if we want to secede.
The way things are going, I wouldn't try to predict the answer.
By LINK BYFIELD
As Canada heads full-tilt into another political war over the price of gas, it's interesting to note the breathtaking East-West difference in attitudes.
"Harper cannot be a winner," writes Ottawa Sun columnist Val Sears in the piece that appears on this page, "as long as his national policies are devised in Alberta, that porcine province with little connection to the rest of the country."
In this one (I hope) careless sentence Sears demonstrates (a) his ignorance of who Albertans are, and (b) his utter contempt for our province.
On the same day Sears column appeared in Ottawa, Vancouver columnist Barbara Yaffe sang the praises of a separate nation consisting of Alberta and B.C.
Yaffe is no angry redneck.
She's an urban left-liberal "moderate" who has lived and worked all over the country.
Though she ends her column with the standard disclaimer ("I am not a separatist"), she describes the nation of Alberta/B.C. in the most glowing terms: "Blissfully unilingual," "topnotch Pacific ports and network of universities," "eminently viable," complementary economies, etc., etc.
Now I'm not a separatist any more than Yaffe (or, for that matter, our new Governor General from Quebec).
You don't break up your country just to get a raise in pay. But it makes you wonder: what would justify it?
Suppose the government --the federal government --changed all the rules. Would that justify secession? Yes it would. And as it happens, the government has done just that.
Canada was designed as a non-centralized federal state in 1867, and remained so until Pearson and Trudeau centralized social, cultural and economic policy in the 1960s.
All Ottawa was supposed to run was the army, foreign affairs, currency and the Post Office.
Civil rights, language and culture, health care, welfare, education, economic development, housing, civic infrastructure -- all these were assigned to provincial governments.
Why?
So that different regional cultures and values could be preserved, and to maintain a strong connection in people's minds between rights and responsibilities, between what we want and what we can afford.
The Liberals convinced people it made more sense for Ottawa to fund these things and move massive amounts of money around the country, through Equalization, EI, CPP, national medicare and many other programs.
All of it was a direct repudiation of the principle on which the provinces united in 1867, and the terms on which other provinces (B.C. in 1871, Alberta in 1905) joined later.
The final blow fell with the Charter of Rights in 1982, which transferred power over civil rights and social policy from our elected legislatures to the judges appointed by Ottawa.
Nowhere were these changes resisted more strenuously than in Alberta, starting with E.C. Manning and continuing through Lougheed and Getty.
Invariably, all such arguments go back to the Constitution. It can't be avoided. Canadians flee in horror at the mere mention of the word. Premiers cite the "Charlottetown referendum disaster" as their excuse for not trying, as though it happened last month and not 13 years ago.
This refusal to face reality will not save us from falling apart politically and losing ground economically, both of which are happening.
It's significant that two of the three most prosperous nations in the world, Switzerland and the U.S., are also the most democratic and the most constitutionally self-disciplined.
(Incidentally, the other most-prosperous nation is not Canada, it's Norway. We're actually about 16th.)
Premier Ralph Klein has failed big-time in the constitutional area.
Instead of mugging as the Lone Ranger and saying "Keep your hands off our cash," he should be asking the legislature to enact a constitutional resolution limiting federal spending, curbing the new political powers of the courts, and reforming Parliament with a Triple-E Senate.
After Alberta passes that amendment, the rest of Canada has three years to consider it.
If the amendment dies, Albertans could then be legally asked in a referendum (under the federal Clarity Act) if we want to secede.
The way things are going, I wouldn't try to predict the answer.
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