We Ain’t The Canada We Think We Are
I wonder if we ever actually were?
Just 13.5 per cent of respondents in the Canada Day poll (or slightly more than one out of 10 Canadians) still adhere to the vision set out in principle by the Fathers of Confederation in 1867 that Canada is a union of equal provincial partners.
“The idea of a country of 10 equal provinces,” says a summary of the survey by the Association for Canadian Studies, appears to be “dead and gone” after 142 years of nationhood.
It’s been dead for some time.
If you don’t believe me move to BC before the next federal election so you can turn on your TV after the polls close and discover that your government was probably elected before you got to cast your ballot.
If you don’t believe me listen to the central Canada whine about the west being in power – or remember back a few years to how the west whined about Ontario & Quebec making all the decisions for so long.
The “preferred vision,” the poll reveals, “is that of a country of 33 million equal citizens” – a view shared by about 45 per cent of respondents.
And slighter more than one-third of those surveyed – 35 per cent – viewed Canada as a “multi-nation” country with major groupings such as English Canada, the Quebec nation, First Nations, Inuit and others.
I’ve often made the argument that a republic would be more realistic than what we have now, and personally I think it’s well passed time to have that discussion and lay the mythology of the homogeneous Canadian people to rest.
What is actually wrong with admitting that we are a geographically large country, populated by very diverse groups of people, who just possibly want different things?
What is actually wrong with different provinces and different regions wanting to realize their particular goals, and their particular aspirations, in their own particular ways?
What is actually wrong with different provinces and different regions having different aspirations and goals?
What is the point of trying to maintain a “one size fits all” country when everyone knows that one size fits all doesn’t actually work in much of anything?
Why not simply admit to reality and allow people, through governments closer to them, to decide what they want to accomplish and how they want to accomplish it?
All questions I’ve asked.
Yes, Canada should be a republic.
No, there’s nothing wrong with a, b, c, or d.
And damn right, Canadians need control of governments closer to them geographically, governments whose powers and resources are greater than those of the feds.
It’s the fact that one-size-fits-all isn’t working for many in BC that people like Daphne and I have spoken openly about separation of the province from Canada and/or Vancouver Island from BC. Thing is, few Canadians are willing to express publicly what they’ll say privately among friends.
I’ve spoken along the same lines here
Yes to Republic, and yes to more representation in our elected chambers. Let’s put the axe to the constitutional monarchy.
Rick Mercer did a funny sketch on this a while back.
Here’s the post Daphne and I wrote January 28. It runs along similar lines.
A strong central government is all that prevents the country from disbanding.
Some may say “So why not just let them disband?”
I for one like the diversity of a large, united Canada. There’s nothing wrong with provincial diversity – that’s why we have provinces and provincial rights under the constitution.
Throbbin, the feds have too much power and the provinces and territories too little. Hence, citizens have too little power to change what directly affects them.
If you live in Ontario, you may do just fine. But the further you go from the centre of the universe, the more you’ll discover Canadians to be dissatisfied with their central government.
Transforming Canada to a republic wouldn’t change the fact that we’re a nation of diverse populations.
@Throbbin: That’s what they would like you to believe – yup.
But ask yourself, why would Canada disband if the provincial and municipal levels had more authority to govern their own affairs?
What makes us so different from, lets say, the republic south of the border that does not seem to have suffered that fate?
@Throbbin –
One could also argue a strong centralized govt. is one of the reasons this country is so regionalized and divided.
I have alway thought that Canadian reflexive anti-Americanism is one of the reasons we’ll never take the leap. It’s just too American a concept, and most people who are against it inevitably fall back on that as an arguement against it.
I’m all for the republic idea. The best part about becoming a republic is that we could get that horse-faced bitch off of our money and tell her entire inbred family to go shit in their hats once and for all.
As mentioned many times before, keep the monarchy so long as the king is I.
I find this post a little hard to take seriously, since Canada is considered one of the most decentralised federations in the World.
That people have become indifferent to local government and a converged media has, out of sheer laziness, focused on pan-Canadian issues at the expense of local coverage doesn’t mean that inherently, the foundations established at Confederation have changed dramatically. In any case, what was also established, along with federalism, was the concept that residual powers devolve to the central government, and not the province, nor the people. In that sense, there’s been a real incentive for sub-national government to retain authority, or else lose it.
You’re confusing perception with reality, which is pretty much standard these days. Maybe a comparison of public funds disbursed at the provincial and municipal levels versus those disbursed by Ottawa (taking into account transfers, or course) would be helpful in determining where a lot of the authority lies.
Let’s understand the issue first, before suggesting solutions.
What Ti-Guy said. Also, I’m confused about your use of the term “republic.” A republic as I understand it has nothing to do with regional power; it simply means a representative democracy that doesn’t have a monarchy. France, Germany, and Ireland are republics; none of them are as decentralized as Canada.
Whooee! I reckon a lotta the issue boils down to money. The feds are pretty good at collectin’ taxes. They ain’t got much outta me lately but if I made any money, I figger they’d have their hands on it. The provinces and municipalities ain’t so good at collectin’ tax — particularly income tax. The feds got the machinery in place an’ the prisons to toss you in if yer a bigass tax cheat.
The money needs to be spent more locally, though. Unless yer tossin’ it down the drain in Afstan, that is. Locally, we need them dang infrastructures that they’re always yammerin’ on about. The feds mostly ain’t got much of a clue what sorta infrastructures we need an’ they can’t seem to spend a nickel without wastin’ a dime.
I reckon there’s some criminal code stuff we can pretty much agree on as a nation. But there’s a lotta stuff where one size don’t fit all. My buddy bought hisself a hat recently an’ inside there was this here tag says: “One size fits most.” Maybe that’s the sort federalism we got.
JB
May I be the one to suggest No federal government at all. Hell no provincial government. A loose collection of city-states seems much more effecient and responsive to me.
I’d settle for what we have now, so long as it was all voluntary…
But I’m just a dreamer…
We gotta start somewhere Mike, and face it, under the current system the vast majority of the Canadian population actually want to be lead around by their collective noses and told when they can and cannot talk on their cell phones, what does or does not constitute “outside”, and who should or should not be allowed to own fire arms, or even if we should be allowed to own them at all.
Just maybe if we get a republican model happening and people realize that they are actually better off, happier, and more productive, being governed by people closer to home we can start working on the concept of how happy, better off, and more productive, people would be governing their own lives instead of handing all their decision making responsibility over to those they consider to be their political betters.
Yeah, I know ….. I’m a dreamer to…..
@stageleft –
A republican model would merely swap the Queen for a president.
There are many republics that are unitary states and all control is with the central government.
What you are arguing for is a looser federation than what we have now and not a republic.
In the strictest sense becoming a republic would result in the removal of the Queen as the Canadian head of state — with her departure the GG would become unnecessary, there is no requirement for a republic to have a president.
In the better understood meaning of the word the central government would give up power in favour of the provinces and (in theory anyway) return to being responsible for POGG. In an ideal world the province would look after strictly provincial concerns and send municipalities additional power.
The US started out with a good idea but then they screwed it up with the federal level telling state and local levels what they could and could not do and backing those demands by withholding federal services if compliance was not forth coming.
@stageleft –
France is a republic and has a highly centralized government. You’re overloading the term republic in ways that are not generally used in political science. While there may be an argument to eliminate the monarchy and transform the country into a republic, that transformation does not mean a decentralized system of government, again see the many unitary republics.
Properly you seem to be arguing for a confederal republic. One where the federated units have more power than the central government. In other words, more powers assigned to the the federated units than to the central government, as well as residual powers also delegated to the federated units and not the central government, the opposite of what we have now. Strictly speaking that would also be a federation, just with the powers opposite. It could be a monarchy or a republic as allocation of power is irrelevant vis-a-vis the form of the executive.
Don’t get me wrong, the division of powers between Ottawa and the provinces is a valuable conversation. By mangling terms we end up with a confusing debate as I am unsure where you have learned your “better understood meaning” from, as it is not the actual meaning of the term. By pushing the wrong use of a term we end up in places we don’t want to go, for example, a government telling its citizens that an opposing coalition is illegal, since the commonly held belief on elections is wrong.
What we need is a body that will advocate on behalf of a vision for the federation as opposed to what we have right now which is national PROXY parties of the majority and because the majority lives in Upper and Lower canada 181/308 seats due to the cause and effect of our flawed political Per Capita Colonialist system all of the national parties are in effect PROXY govts for that Tyranny of the majority.
We are the only commonwealth nation that hasn’t evolved their parliament so that there is a Upper house of equal representation with a non-partisan vision for whats in the best interest of the majority of the members/provinces of the federation to compete with the lower houses vision for the majority of the population.
Our democracy has become a TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY of the population.
Or if you will Per Capita Colonialism,
Democratic Discrimination by all of the national PROXY parties for the majority population against the minority population provinces.
Just look at the numbers it’s a numbers game and when 66% of the canadain population lives in two provinces the rest of the provinces have become colonies.
The only equality amongst the provinces in this phony federation is between Ontario and Quebec. They both have an equal number of senators and an equal number of Supreme Court of canada judges.
Then take into account the Patronage powers of teh PM the executive appointment powers teh Strategic voting only encouraging ping pong politics of Lib Con, and the myth that all democracies are equal because you feel you have a choice even if it is a false choice, the feeling of involvement by marking your X even though nothing will change no matter what party is in power due to the demographics of our federation and ypou get teh Hope Springs Eternal and the INSANITY OF VOTING.
Definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over and expecting a diferent result.
Oh and think again if you think spoiling your ballot will garner any attention.
Quebec has the highest spoiled ballot count in the federation and it is rationalized by the politics as a language barrier.
Then there is the Bloc. No federal party can call a referendum!
The Quebec Prov separatist party is a distant third in Quebec yet the pundits still insist on saying the Bloc is a separatist party?
The Bloc is there because the french speaking Quebecers know thta they are a minority in this federation and if they vote in a national party that party has to cater to the majority of english speaking canada if they want to get re-elected.
Hence the term Tyranny of the majority.
Balkanize the Senate to stop the Balkanization of the HOC.