Harper squanders chance to set a new course

The Conservative government reverted to what many of its critics feel are its basic steamrolling instincts.

MONTREAL Based on the events of the past week, Canada’s constitutional earth is as scorched today as when the country’s political establishment — including the First Nations leadership — got burnt in a national referendum two decades ago.

If anything, our collective will to undertake some heavy lifting to co-habit politically may have continued to decrease since the 1992 rejection of the Charlottetown constitutional accord.

In today’s political climate, it would be impossible to even contemplate gathering the successors of the architects of the Charlottetown accord around the same table, let alone expect them to rally around a unanimous proposal on a comprehensive way forward on the constitutional front.

To wit, the difficulties in finding enough goodwill to hold Friday’s half-day meeting involving a single order of government and only one of the many constituencies — albeit the most complex one — that fought for attention and accommodation at the time of the last failed constitutional round.

Yes, the approach of Stephen Harper’s government has contributed to the most serious breakdown in the relationship between the First Nations and the Crown since the 1990 Oka crisis.

And yes, the current prime minister, through wilful neglect, has potentially squandered one of the best chances for productive dialogue with the First Nations by marginalizing Shawn Atleo, one of the most pragmatic interlocutors a federal government has had a chance to deal with in more than a generation.

Jim Prentice and Chuck Strahl, Harper’s first two Indian Affairs ministers, grasped the crucial importance of maintaining bridges with the First Nations leadership. Sadly, once it had a governing majority and with a less politically astute minister on the front line, the Conservative government reverted to what many of its critics feel are its basic steamrolling instincts.

But at the end of the day, the current outpouring of First Nations frustration is also the culmination of a systemic and collective failure to take the bull of history by the horns.

That failure is not just exemplified by the Idle No More movement and the possible radicalization of a new First Nations guard in the face of perceived federal hostility.

The presence in Quebec of yet another sovereigntist government is another token of unaddressed unresolved issues with another of Canada’s founding peoples.

But these tensions are not just a result of the policy mindset of the party that happens to be in power on Parliament Hill.

Canadians are quick to cast judgment on the Americans and the entrenched societal reflexes that prevent them from arriving at consensual outcomes on health care or on the place of guns in their society.

But some similar blockages have long crippled our national conversation and reduced the capacity of those who govern Canada to recast some fundamental relationships.

Political will — as was shown at the time of the Meech and Charlottetown debates — has obvious limitations when it does not intersect with the popular will.

Over the past few weeks, there are those who have been dismayed by the toxic tone of the social media as the First Nations issue has heated up. But the twittersphere is only providing a more public outlet for a visceral and polarizing current that systematically surfaces in tandem with any discussion of the place of the country’s national minorities in modern-day Canada.

It was just easier to diminish the existence of that current back when it was not in plain sight.

Doesn’t anyone remember the quasi-hysterical reaction and the over-the-top language that attended the adoption of a mere House of Commons resolution dealing with Quebec’s national status in 2006 in some otherwise mainstream quarters?

Or what about the vitriolic comments that so routinely make their way below media stories related to Quebec these days that many no longer take notice of them?

There are many admirable features to Canada’s attachment to a civic form of nationalism but the tendency to use it to refuse to come to terms with the distinctive elements that are at the root of the country’s identity is not one of them.

Chantal Hébert is a national affairs writer.