NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
COMMENTARY
April 16, 2005
Maîtres chez nous
This is it: perhaps. Not only might we get an election out of this Gomery business but in that election a chance to slay the "national unity" bogeyman. Now that would be a national accomplishment. And it would come out of a new and obvious perception: that the behaviour of the Liberal Party of Canada is EQUALLY insulting to Canada and Quebec. Consider if you will the following election result. The Conservatives sweep the Maritimes Ontario and the West in a tide of disgust with the Liberal Party. Since we're fantasizing let's say they take 200 of the 233 available seats. Then the Bloc Qu?b?cois sweeps Quebec in a parallel tide taking 65 of the 75 seats. I'm enjoying this thought let me give you the totals: Conservatives 200 BQ 65 Liberals 25 NDP 15 and three independents. It wouldn't be the first time we had a separatist opposition in our House of Commons so keep your hat on. It would just be the first time we had a Conservative government and a separatist opposition. Or more to the point a Conservative government with better things to do than soak the "national unity" sponge and wash our clock with it. For sure there would be "talk". The Bloc could indeed be expected to talk de talk and walk de walk. That is the business they are in after all -- strutting about demanding independence for one of Canada's more dependent provinces. They would demand this that and the other for Quebec. But they would not be speaking as one knowing qu?b?cois to another with a prime minister from a law office in Montreal. They would be speaking instead to well Stephen Harper -- as peaches-and-cream an embodiment of English Canadianism as one could reasonably hope to find. And he speaks passable French too so there'll be no misunderstandings. It is a "make my day" scenario. Mr. Harper has long been committed to the devolution or let us say re-devolution of all kinds of powers that belonged to the provinces in our actual constitution. Powers over social and municipal and eleemosynary (lovely word no?) policies that the federal government usurped from them over the decades through matching-fund programmes sheer chutzpah and the "great society" initiatives of the 1960s. The jungle-growth entanglement of federal and provincial bureaucracies could do with some enthusiastic pruning for Canadian governance has become a kind of spontaneous effusion of the Department of Redundancy Department. Best of all no constitutional amendments should be required to return the country to the division of legislative powers already set out in sections 91 and 92 of the BNA Act of 1867 unrevised and unrepented in the Canada Act of 1982. So let Quebec be Quebec. And let Alberta be Alberta. And let Ontario be Ontario: Dalton McGuinty should be pleased to obtain a few much-coveted tax points. Let the redistribution of our income taxes from the 'ave to the 'ave-not provinces be made a little cleaner and more visible. Verily let us do the opposite of what was contemplated during Brian Mulroney's tenure the muddy Meech Lake and Charlottetown puddles which the sun dried away. Will this make Quebec happy? It's up to them really. Do they want to be "ma?tres chez nous" or masters in our house? Can't have both. But if it's the idea they can that is keeping them in Canada it is time to get an answer. No need to wave maple leaves in their faces or in the manner of Liberal sponsorship schemes the red flag at the bull. For many years the Liberals have been running this outrageous imposture that we must elect them -- corrupt and incompetent and malicious as they may be -- to preserve national unity. And for as long they have been teasing the Quebec bull in order to keep their job as matador. How dare Paul Martin declare once again in the upshot of the Gomery Inquiry that the next election will be about "national unity"! How profoundly insulting to the intelligence of Canadians English and French-speaking alike. Au contraire it is time to put an end to this obscene farce. Let the Conservatives sweep English Canada and the Bloc sweep Quebec. Then let us begin speaking in the common language of adults about what we all want. No one who has attained voting age should be asked to bear for another minute the idea that Canada can only be saved by writing blank tax cheques to the Liberal Party. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top