Canada in Search of an Identity. How we Fit in
TORONTO – Anyone who shaves or puts on make-up in the morning (or whenever) knows the routine of trying to put one’s best foot forward, alerting everyone to your persona and what they might expect of you. Canadians are captives of someone else’s agenda, in my humble opinion because we cannot seem to answer the fundamental question, “who are we”?
For that simple fact, we cannot seem to take direction from, or give authority to, those we elect to provide governing principles to create the legal and economic environment required to thrive as we transcend generational experiences. It is not for want of trying, I imagine, but for the distractions we allow that prevent us from “seizing the moment”.
It is by now commonly accepted that the biggest distraction of all time is the current President of the USA – a colourful character who is causing us to rethink everything about our relations domestically and internationally. At first blush, internal chaos should be the most urgent “crisis” to avoid – because everything today is a “crisis”.
From my vantage point, the real culprit is the inherent weakness of our “national governance structure” – our Confederation – which impedes the definition of “national interests”. As a younger man, I dreamt great ambitions for the huge geopolitical expanse that is Canada. Others can assume that challenge.
Just watching the “negotiations” (superficially, of course) to get potash, crude petroleum and liquid natural gas from two fabulously rich, land-locked provinces, Alberta and Saskatchewan, to a West Coast in port in British Columbia is the stuff of movies with themes of cupidity and extortion. One has the impression that invading armies are at our gates as inter-provincial bickering now border on the fringe of setting aside “jurisdictional obligations and authorities” via the invocation of “notwithstanding clauses” or threats of a “referendum”… to assert autonomy, if not independence, à la Quebecoise.
A former colleague, friend, also co-founder of the Bloc Quebecois, upon reconversion, used to refer to this as neverendum. The conversation was always localized: “who was here first or lives closest to the natural resource is the owner”. The courts, in their decisions, seem to encourage that thinking. And “gaming the system” is now the order of the day.
Those provinces, individually or in pairs are doing their best to impair federal authority even at the risk of loosening the glue and commonalities that hold us together.
