It's Here

Canada is heading for a constitutional crisis. The governments of Quebec, Alberta, and Ontario have been flexing their muscles. Andrew Coyne has had enough:

What should the federal government do about this? We know the answer already. It is the same advice it is given in all such circumstances. It should do nothing. It should do nothing, not because doing nothing is necessarily the best course, but because to do something about it – even to speak against it, in anything but the most respectful tones – might upset Quebec. Or another province, as the case may be.

Thus is the eleventh commandment, Thou Shalt Not Offend The Provinces, depicted as a legal or even moral absolute, and not what it is really: raw power, on the provinces’ part, and raw fear, on the feds’.

This commandment ignores the obvious:

The only reason to have a federation is to have a federal government. It isn’t just about provinces co-operating or getting along with one another: If that were all, they could do it as 10 separate states – exchange ambassadors, send fraternal greetings, the lot. It’s the particular role played by a federal government, invested with federal powers, that marks a federation apart from an alliance.

The Fathers of Confederation knew this. They created a federal government with real powers to do the things the provinces couldn’t or wouldn’t do on their own: to enforce a common market, to safeguard minority rights, and to otherwise ensure the provinces did not, in the individual exercise of their powers, do harm to the whole.

Now it can do none of those things. Nor, thanks to the notwithstanding clause, can the courts. We are told we must simply accept that Canada should be a place where religious and linguistic minorities are banished from the public square, that cannot function as a single economy, that cannot perform the most basic functions of a nation-state – or even call itself a nation. And we must do all these things in the name of national unity!

History suggests that, when the federal government flexes its muscle, the right things happen:

What might be noticed about previous such crises, on those few occasions – patriation, the secession reference, the Clarity Act – when the federal government has worked up the nerve to proceed over provincial objections, is that it emerged with its authority enhanced, not diminished. Support for secessionism fell, not rose.

Perhaps this is not accidental. Perhaps when a federal government acts like a federal government, it reminds people that the federal government exists, that it has a reason for existing, that it has its own role and its own legitimacy, independent of what the provinces think of it. Constitutional crisis? Bring it on.

Justin Trudeau might not be ready for the fight. But Andrew Coyne is.

Image: Maytree