October 18, 2005

Defying Laws of Politics When it Comes to Quebec and Alberta

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Our politics seem to defy many of the observations that apply elsewhere in the world. In Canada, you actually can have your cake and eat it too, if you're Quebec, or you may end up having neither, if you're Alberta.

Quebec acquires more and more of the trappings of sovereignty through an asymmetrical federalism that allows it "distinct" status within the country, and its citizens keep electing Bloc Québécois MPs to the House of Commons.

Yet the province also continues, thanks mostly to the Liberal Party, to have a disproportionate say in governing Canada as a whole.

Many of Canada's top offices, from those of the prime minister and the governor-general on down, are held by Québécois. Quebec's 7.56 million people make up about 24% of Canada's population but they are statistically over-represented in the federal bureaucracy and in many other institutions. And since 1968, every Canadian prime minister who has lasted more than a year has been from Quebec.

A decade ago, when it seemed the Yes side would win the Quebec referendum on sovereignty, a group of anglo Canadian Liberal cabinet ministers openly contemplated removing Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, a Québécois, from office, according to Breaking Point: Canada's Referendum, a CBC documentary televised this past September.

"If there would have been talks to negotiate the separation of Quebec, the Canadian population would have never accepted that on one side you would have representatives from the province of Quebec and on the other side a Quebecker as the representative of Canada," stated John Manley, a former member of Chrétien's government, who was interviewed for the program.

But things have now returned to "normal," it seems. Prime Minister Paul Martin has assured Quebec premier Jean Charest that he is open to the idea of broadening Quebec's role on the international stage.

The Gérin-Lajoie Doctrine, named after a Quebec minister in the 1960s who asserted that Ottawa did not have exclusive constitutional power over foreign affairs, has long guided Quebec's strategy.

Unlike other provinces, Quebec has a ministry dedicated to international relations, with a $100 million budget and a staff of 400. It has asked for its own seat at international summits and membership in multilateral agencies and UN-affiliated bodies such as the International Labour Organization and World Health Organization. Quebec already has its own seat at meetings of La Francophonie, the international club of countries with French culture.

The Quebec National Assembly a few years ago voted itself the authority to debate treaties and accords signed by Canada, if they concern an area of provincial jurisdiction. Quebec's "right to give its consent before Canada signs" any such treaty or agreement "must be recognized," recently declared Quebec's International Affairs Minister, Monique Gagnon-Tremblay.

The federal Foreign Affairs Minister, Pierre Pettigrew, agrees: He told the House of Commons that Quebec deserves a say in international forums discussing health, culture and education..

Pettigrew and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Lucienne Robillard, both francophone Quebecers, met on Oct. 7 with Gagnon-Tremblay and with Quebec's Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Benoît Pelletier, also of course francophone Québécois, regarding Quebec's demands.

Both sides called the meeting "cordial" and "positive," even though nothing concrete was finalized and more discussions will be scheduled. "I didn't feel intransigence, I felt an openness," Pelletier later remarked. All this, while the rest of Canada stands idly by.

On the other hand, wealthy Alberta has almost no say in how the country is governed at the federal level. No Albertan has served as prime minister since Joe Clark was in office for nine months in 1979-1980. (The only other PM from there was R.B. Bennett, who served between 1930 and 1935.)

Thanks to sky-rocketing oil prices, Alberta has been running huge surpluses. But this is creating "Alberta envy" elsewhere. A poll conducted in mid-September by the Strategic Counsel found that 61 per cent of Canadians outside Alberta believe that the province's oil windfall should be shared to help those harmed by rising energy costs.

So will Albertans soon have neither their cake nor eat it? Not surprisingly, only 26 per cent of Albertans felt the same way, and Premier Ralph Klein insisted "it's not in the cards."

No wonder Albertans increasingly question their role, mostly financial, in sustaining a federation which allows them little input in decision-making, and even demonizes them as having values out of step with other Canadians, while coveting their cash.

Can anyone imagine a comparable situation in any other country as diverse as ours? Certainly Americans would find this bizarre. No state has a hammerlock on the presidency, nor are any completely marginalized and cut out of governance at the national level.

But then, in the United States, the individual states don't fight with each other as though they were little countries, as is the case in Canada.