Searching for Plan A: National Unity and the Chrétien Government’s New Federalism

Searching for Plan A: National Unity and the Chrétien Government’s New Federalism

Description

Whatever the views of the proverbial “ordinary Canadian,” media pundits, opposition politicians and constitutional experts have been relentless in pestering the federal government to develop a plan to “save Canada”—Plan A, as it has now come to be known. Despite the grandiose failure of what Peter Russell has described as “mega-constitutional politics” in the Canada round, there is no shortage of new proposals being generated that purport to restructure fundamentally the Canadian federation in the cause of unity. These include André Burelle’s European Union-inspired scheme of co-determination in Le Mal canadien; Tome Courchene’s ACCESS; and Gordon Gibson’s original Plan A. Further “solutions’ to the purported unity crisis are being worked on by a group of individuals oddly named the Group of 22, and by the Business Council on National Issues. The grand and comprehensive aspiration of most of these schemes indicates that the authors have learned little or nothing from the Charlottetown debacle—once acquired, a taste for mega-constitutional politics often sets the implicit (and sometimes explicit) standard against which more modest, more subtle, incremental changes to the working of the federation are judged and found wanting. Against this tendency, there is much to be said for judging the Chrétien government’s record on federalism on its own terms, that is, not as a timid and unsatisfactory attempt at some kind of comprehensive national unity project, but rather as based on an alternative vision to that of mega-constitutional politics. This entails viewing the evolution of the Canadian federation as advanced best not by “throwing the dice” and the manufacture or exploitation of crisis, but through step-by-step evolution of federal practice to reflect changing realities and evolving conceptions of justice. This vision is underpinned by an understanding of the institutional sophistication and complexity of the Canadian constitutional order, which adapts and changes through multiple channels and processes, including the political practice of federal-provincial relations, formalized intergovernmental agreements and the judicial interpretation of the constitution. Even the major innovation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 can be seen as the culmination of an increasing rights orientation in Canadian political culture, expressed in provincial human rights codes, and a series of constitutional decisions that inferred the protection of civil liberties from the general character of the Canadian constitution and the Canadian form of government. Similarly multiculturalism and its constitutional entrenchment were less a product of some ideal model of Canadian society, but a response to the reality of its changing shape. Likewise the amendment to the constitution in 1982 giving provinces increased control over their natural resources emerged from a context of difficult political bargaining and interaction between the provinces and the federal government, not from an academic’s or bureaucrat’s conception of an ideal, rational division of powers. On the basis of this more institutionally subtle and complex vision of how the federation evolves, the Chrétien government can claim some important achievements, although these will doubtless seem paltry to those still trapped in the mindset of mega-constitutional politics. The government has successfully pursued and achieved a major agreement with the provinces on the removal of barriers to internal trade; it has restructured its policy role in labour market training, developing agreements with the provinces that get the federal government out of the service delivery end while vindicating the national interest through performance-based, negotiated national standards; the government has begun to reimagine the Canadian social union, working with the provinces under the umbrella of the Ministerial Council for Social Policy Renewal and already achieving concrete results in the area of child poverty. A new national institution, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, has been created, consolidating and rationalizing important functions within the federal government while providing a new institutional framework for interjurisdictional cooperation. If this were not enough, the government has—in the Speech from the Throne and the second Red Book of the Liberal Party—given itself the task, during the second mandate, of further enhancing mobility within the Canadian economic and social union, and pledged on 26 February 1996 to “work with the provinces and the private sector” to achieve “a much more open agreement” on internal trade. If the federal government has not neglected the task of strengthening the Canadian community, it has been labouring at some disadvantage because its vision of the Canadian community has remained largely unarticulated. Perhaps as a reaction to unrealistic and grandiose schemes, the government has consciously decided to portray its activity as muddling through or making the federation work better. In this chapter, I propose a vision of Canadian community that makes sense for the twenty-first century; a vision nevertheless rooted in the major transformations in the Canadian polity that have occurred in the last 25 years, from the introduction of bilingualism to the holding of a national constitutional referendum; and a vision that vindicates the general intuitions behind the significant but incremental changes to federalism that the government has sought to achieve over the last five years. Because this is not a partisan effort, it will also entail criticisms of federal practice, although not from the perspective of mega-constitutional politics.

Source Publication

Canada: The State of the Federation 1997: Non-Constitutional Renewal

Source Editors/Authors

Harvey Lazar

Publication Date

1998

Searching for Plan A: National Unity and the Chrétien Government’s New Federalism

Share

COinS