National Post (National Edition)
Donald J. Savoie: The deck is stacked against the West,
Regionalism explains virtually everything Canadian. We have several English Canadas, two or three French Canadas, Indigenous communities, Western alienation, the Maritime Rights Movement, the North, rural Canada, urban Canada, the Prairies, the industrial heartland and the Laurentian consensus. Historian Ramsay Cook went to the heart of the issue — “the question of Canadian identity is not a Canadian question at all but a regional question.”
Canada's Constitution makes no reference to space or regions. The focus of the 1867 British North America Act (BNA) is on language and denominational rights, revealing code words for the two-nation concept or Ontario and Quebec. The Constitution Act, 1982 also had nothing to say about Canada's regional question. Canada's political institutions were designed in 1867 by Ontario and Quebec for the interest of Ontario and Quebec, and the bias continues. Western Canada had no representative in the negotiations and the four Atlantic provinces were brought in to break the political impasse in 1864 between the two Canadas. All four Atlantic colonies opposed the deal — both Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island walked out of the negotiations. Nova Scotians voted twice to leave Confederation and, initially at least, New Brunswick voted against entering Confederation. New Brunswick's premier at the time explained why: “Small provinces should be given at least the guard which they have in the United States, an equal and effective Senate, although we ought to have more because, here, the executive branch is all-powerful.”
John A. Macdonald and GeorgeEtienne Cartier gave Canada a unitary state in all but name. The BNA Act even gave the provincial lieutenant-governors (appointed by the federal government) the power to stop provincial legislation from coming into force until Ottawa approved it. It will be recalled that Western Canada strongly opposed Ottawa's national policy (circa 1878) and passed legislation designed to attenuate its impact. However, between 1867 and 1920, Ottawa disallowed 96 provincial laws with the bulk from Western Canada dealing with the national policy. In sharp contrast, Ottawa only disallowed a handful of acts from Ontario and Quebec between 1867 and 1943.
As I argue in Moment of Truth: How to Think About Alberta's Future, the corset Macdonald-Cartier gave to Canada could not hold as the welfare state took shape. Rather than amend the Constitution to give life to Canada's regional realities, policy-makers embraced hyphenated federalism. Hyphenated federalism has enabled Ottawa to distribute wealth all the while leaving intact its ability to influence where and how wealth is created. Atlantic Canada has benefited greatly from federal transfer payments, a form of guilt money, as compensation for Ottawa's economic policies. Western Canada has generated a great deal of funds to replenish federal coffers, albeit not because national economic policies helped the region grow.
National economic policies will continue to benefit the economic interests of vote-rich Ontario and Quebec because Canada's national institutions were designed for this. It has become an integrated part of the Ottawa mindset. Consider one of many examples: Member of Parliament David McGuinty observed that Alberta politicians in Ottawa are being too “provincial” when they focus on the energy sector. He argued: “They are national legislators with a national responsibility, but they come across as very, very small-p provincial individuals who are jealously guarding one industrial sector, picking the fossil-fuel business and the oilsands business specifically.”
The one industrial sector, fossil fuel, matters to British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador. No matter, in the eyes of McGuinty it is a regional sector, and politicians who focus on it are parochial. However, McGuinty, other MPs from Ontario and the national media view the automobile sector as national. Yet for nine of Canada's 10 provinces, the automobile industry is a regional sector.
Canada is the only federation that has no capacity in its national political institutions to speak for the regions. Two provinces — Ontario and Quebec — decide who wins power. Cabinet has been turned into a focus group, muffling further voices from Western and Atlantic Canada. The current prime minister went further than any of his predecessors in downplaying the regional voice in Ottawa when he did away with regional ministers.
The federal public service is increasingly concentrated in Ottawa, where virtually all senior executives are located. This serves to strengthen further the Central Canada bias in policy-making. Forty-five years ago, about one in four federal public servants worked in the National Capital Region (NCR). Today, 42 per cent work in the NCR. One ought not to be surprised that a recent public opinion survey reveals “a persistent malaise in Atlantic Canada” and “Western alienation has gotten worse.” More to the point, Canada will never be fully at peace with itself until it learns to accommodate regional circumstances in shaping policies.
So what now? By design, Canada's national institutions have blinders on when it comes to the economic interests of Atlantic and Western Canada. Ontario and Quebec see no reason to see national institutions lose their blinders because they continue to serve their political and economic interests. Western and Atlantic Canada have a common interest to promote — seeing national institutions accommodate their interests. They should join forces to press for change in the workings of our national institutions and to decentralize both the federal government's policy advisory capacity and operations. As history has made clear time and again, nothing short of that will do. Structural problems require structural solutions.
Donald J. Savoie is a contributor to Moment of Truth: How to Think About Alberta's Future, now available from
Sutherland House.