Canada’s first federalist championed diversity

Alexander Galt’s ideas continue to shape Canadian life today, former prime minister Paul Martin writes.

Despite the century-anda-half that separates us, Alexander Galt and I share a common background.

We both live or lived in Quebec’s Eastern Townships and we were both Canada’s finance minister, albeit he was the first.

A pioneering figure in Canada’s railways and the initiator of Canada’s first tariff to encourage domestic industry, Galt played a pivotal role in Confederation as Canada’s first federalist, every bit a fitting rival of better-known Fathers of Confederation. The time has come to rediscover Galt’s federalist legacy: the ideas and institutions that continue to shape Canadian life today.

Nine years before Confederation, as an independent backbencher, Galt tabled the first resolutions proposing the federal union of all the provinces of British North America. He appealed to Canadian ambitions, calling for the expansion to the Pacific and a greater future as one united people. Just months later, he became a government minister, and the Scottish-Canadian businessman from Sherbrooke was on his way to England with his plan to unite the provinces to create a new federation in North America.

The reasons behind Galt’s initiative will be of immense interest to Canadians who are proud of Canada’s diversity.

Initially, what are now known as Ontario and Quebec were united under one government, and the distinct wills of the two increasingly came into conflict.

Alarmed by the intensifying political battles, fuelled by bitter partisanship and cultural differences, some called for their complete separation from each other.

Alexander Galt took a completely different tack.

Galt argued for more diversity, adding new provinces from sea to sea, not less.

By enlarging the national stage, by building a national economy with a federal division of powers, Galt saw the way to a new structure. In his words, Canadians could “find in the diversities of race and religion an incentive to honourable rivalry in favour of our common country rather than to leave them, as now, the subjects by which any party leader may build up an evanescent and baneful popularity by arraying one class against another.”

All Canadians will recognize Galt’s vision that Canada’s strength stems from its diversity, but Galt was its first and bravest pioneer. He stood for Confederation at a time when political realities discouraged vision, and when too many took the partisan road.

Fortunately Macdonald, Cartier and others saw in Galt’s 1858 initiative the origin of a greater country.

Confederation was the coming together of the descendants of European nations often at war with each other, and a scattering of religions that certainly had their differences.

Yet, from this, or perhaps because of it, was created a new land that opened its doors to the world and which stands today as a beacon of equality and freedom.

The paradox in all of this is that the First Peoples of this land, the First Nations, the Métis Nation and Inuit whose ancestors had been here since time immemorial, were not invited to the party. Yet they were major players.

Given this, it would have been understandable in both 1864 and 1867 had the representatives of Indigenous Canada asked: Why weren’t we invited to your meetings? Just as their descendants a century and a half later are asking with rising impatience: What is our place in Confederation today?

I believe, were Galt alive today, he would answer that question by calling upon us to do justice to the Canadian dream by embodying a new relationship with the Indigenous peoples. This is because, as we have learned since Confederation, equity and mutual respect among all of us, without exception, are the essential conditions to the unity, strength and community of the whole.

Paul Martin was the 21st prime minister of Canada. He is the author of the foreword to Alexander Galt: The Federalist by Alastair Gillespie. The paper is the latest entry in the Confederation Series, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s exploration of the Fathers of Confederation.