Just share, already

It’s been a bad few weeks for the idea of a harmonious, united country.

Alberta and British Columbia are at each other’s throats over a pipeline. The Supreme Court of Canada has confirmed that our Constitution doesn’t even allow something so banal as buying a few cases of beer in the province next door.

And now comes the unlikeliest spat of all — a testy tug-of-war over a couple of paintings by long-dead Frenchmen that somehow morphed into a battle between a high-profile federal institution and the Quebec government.

To review: the National Gallery of Canada planned to sell a work by the French modern master Marc Chagall, The Eiffel Tower, and use the proceeds to buy a work by an older French master, Jacques-Louis David, called Saint Jerome Hears the Trumpet of the Last Judgment, which has been owned for many years by a church in Quebec City.

The National Gallery’s director, Marc Mayer, wanted to make sure the David painting stayed in Canada, a reasonable goal in itself. But the deal has been bungled so badly that it turned into an utterly pointless face-off between Quebec and Ottawa.

Two Quebec museums proposed a reasonable solution — sharing the David painting among them. Mayer arrogantly dismissed the idea and managed to offend Quebec’s art world, which got its back up over what it saw as a federal plot to sneak Saint Jerome across the Ottawa River. Now the province’s culture minister, Marie Montpetit, has declared the David work part of Quebec’s “cultural heritage,” meaning it can’t be taken out of Quebec.

Belatedly, the National Gallery has come around to the idea of sharing the painting. It may be too late for that, but it would still be the best solution. Regardless, this whole affair will go down as one of the most futile jurisdictional squabbles in a country that has seen far too many.