Last Thursday, the Supreme Court declared that the carbon tax was constitutional. It was also the day that the Auditor General released her latest report. Susan Delacourt writes:
One theme kept forcing its way through the noise, however, and it’s this: Canada’s perpetual federal-provincial battles are a real and present danger to Canadians and possibly the planet. It’s not just that it would be nice if they could get along — it’s hurting us when they don’t.
Had the governments been working together better at sharing information last year, the auditor-general found, this country would have been better prepared for the pandemic. If Canada is serious about fighting climate change, the Supreme Court ruled, federal and provincial governments are going to have to work together on this matter of “national concern.”
Big global issues, in other words, require a Canada that’s more than the sum of its parts — to borrow a phrase from past national-unity struggles. What we have right now, far too often, is an equation that adds up to nothing — time lost tackling crises because the federal and provincial governments are working at cross purposes.
We are a family. And all families are dysfunctional. It's a matter of degree. These days, there is a continuing quarrel among the members:
Last week reminded us is that government relations matter as much as government itself does. Federal-provincial battles may be inevitable in Canada, but when the stakes are high, they can be destructive.
If national unity is a journey, you might say that last Thursday was the moment when some powerful voices shouted: don’t make me stop this car.
It’s not immediately clear that anyone in the back seat was listening. On Friday, an exasperated Premier Doug Ford said he was telling mayors across Ontario to bang down the doors of federal MPs to speed up vaccine delivery. “I’m frustrated,” Ford said.
In Alberta and Saskatchewan, premiers Jason Kenney and Scott Moe were vowing that the Supreme Court ruling on Thursday was far from the end of their crusade against carbon pricing.
“We are not deterred,” Kenney said. “While the Supreme Court has determined that Prime Minister Trudeau has the legal right to impose a carbon tax, it doesn’t mean he should,” Moe said.
Maybe we will actually have to stop the car.
Which leads to a simple question: Who among us sees the big picture?
Image: wowparenting.com
6 comments:
Another man named Trudeau imagined he could calm the federal-provincial beast with a new policy, "co-operative federalism." The premiers listened, approvingly, as they calculated how best to bleed the federal cash cow. Much of the national debt blamed on PET arose from his misjudgment that the provinces would act responsibly on shared or matching-funds programmes. Instead, many of them saw it as a 50% Off sale. It was possibly Trudeau's worst display of naivete.
Politics has always been a cynical game, Mound. Over the last fifty years, nothing has changed.
With such dysfunction as has been exposed, and as we see it right in front of our eyes, it is very necessary to call in Doctorite Degreeded psychologists now. Anyong
The people who can solve the problem are us, Anyong -- with or without degrees.
Wiell you are correct in your comment, However I was saying dysfuncial families are why the world is in the state it is in hence the need for trained people in psychology to turn this problem around. Of course ithe turn around can begin within the school system and addressing mental health. I am also a teacher and know how mental health needs more recognition now more than ever.
IChildren are not born with dysfunction, they are made by society and so it carries on into realm of politics and what it has become today. Anyong
I agree, Anyong. We are the source of our own problems.
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