TIME FOR A NATIONAL REFERENDUM IN CANADA.
As Canada adapts to the disorderly post-free trade world and an adversarial relationship with the US, we need to take steps now to build a stronger federal structure to ensure Canada’s long-term sovereignty and security. We need constitutional changes to the senate or similar structure, to better manage our highly decentralized federation and strong provincial governments.
This is not a boring theoretical exercise. It is core to Canada’s survival as a resilient independent country. And the constitutional change must involve direct engagement with citizens across Canada through the mechanism of a national referendum, to encourage invaluable discussion and debate and strengthen our collective commitment to build a country that is more than a sum of its parts.
Our federation is dangerously fragmented. As the turbulent Canada-US negotiations clearly reveal, Canada is a loose collection of protectionist provinces, each consumed with distinct economic matrixes – forestry, pipelines, autos, steel, aluminum, essential minerals, dairy farmers, hydro-electricity. Too much of our intergovernmental relations involves tension and complaints, and too little involves collaboration to collectively expand Canada’s economic potential and enable Canada to speak with one voice on critical international trade and security issues.
Canadians are frustrated by our inability to work, invest, and carry on business anywhere in Canada, with Canada-wide training credentials, and seamless, efficient, regulatory regimes. We find ourselves powerless to require our respective provinces to fully participate in building a competitive internal economic union that minimizes the barriers to the free moment of goods, services, people and investment across Canada. The federal government concedes it lacks the power to compel provinces to act, and years of occasional pleading by successive prime ministers, have had little impact.
Over the last year, the prime minister has tried to knit us together through a daisy chain of new bilateral and plurilateral executive deals and ad hoc Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) with various sub-national leaders, (premiers, territorial, Indigenous). The costs are left indeterminate, and Canadian taxpayers are simply expected to pay with blank checks. It is all too likely that the façade of federal harmony will dissipate as the implementation of the MOUs get underway, and difficult questions arise about fairness (fiscal and otherwise) across sub-national governments.
As long as intergovernmental relations in Canada are conducted by the prime minister and premiers, without democratic guardrails like meaningful debates with meaningful information, and votes in our elected legislatures, there is no accountability to Canadians for the billions of dollars flowing through the confusing multitude of intergovernmental MOUs and other fiscal arrangements
At the federal level, the House of Commons plays no meaningful role. And the Senate – that could or should have evolved into a democratic forum for bringing regions/provinces together to promote the national interest and produce coherent and collaborative federal policy – remains a discredited and disgraceful patronage pit.
Canadians should be very concerned about the long-term resilience of a federation effectively run by a first ministers’ clique and their entourages, operating without transparency and accountability to the citizens of Canada.
This is not democracy in action, or government of, by, or for the people, It is government of, by, and for, whoever happens be the premier or prime minster in power at any given time.
What can be done?
Reform the or abolish the senate
Canada needs a structure that can manage, democratically and efficiently, our highly decentralized federation and very strong sub-national (provincial) governments.
Specifically, we need a national forum that is focused on representing the perspectives of the individual provinces and regions on a more equal basis (as distinguished from the one person-one vote in the House of Commons dominated by the more populous Ontario and Quebec). The purpose is to ensure harmonization of federal policy across Canadian jurisdictions whenever needed in the national interest, whether for building a vibrant internal Canadian economy, completing essential infrastructure, developing coherent federal positions to guide international initiatives and negotiations.
One option for a national forum is a reformed senate in parliament. The Triple-E senate model was strongly favored by Canadians in Western and Atlantic Canada during the constitutional debates in the 1980s and 1990s – Elected, Equal representation across provinces (or regions TBD), and Effective. Another entirely different senate model is the German Bundesrat in which the elected sub-national leaders are actually members of the upper house and directly involved in deciding federal policy.
An alternative to a reformed senate is the abolition of the senate and the creation of a Council of Canadian Governments chaired by the prime minister, that does not have formal constitutional status. A Council of Canadian Governments (COCG) could be modelled on Australia’s Council of Australian Governments that operated from 1992 to the pandemic. (See discussion in Part Three of my eBook Canada on the Edge.)
The COCG would be separate from the premiers-only Council of the Federation (COF) that excludes the prime minister. The COF has generally proved unable to pull together coherent joint provincial positions, most notably evident in the recent Canada-US negotiations, and has generally specialized in joint communiques simply demanding more fiscal transfers from the federal to provincial governments.
Whatever the option adopted, Parliament needs an arms-length, transparent, Commission on Federal Transfers reporting to Parliament, (like the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer), to untangle and simplify the huge web of complex federal-provincial and inter-provincial fiscal transfers and initiatives that undermine confidence in the fiscal fairness in the federation. The proposed Commission could also take steps to recommend changes to the incomprehensible equalization program that has done so much to fuel distrust and interprovincial friction.
Increasing national unity – the challenge of Quebec
The real obstacle to strengthening the federation and Canadian national unity is Quebec. Ottawa’s constant appeasement over decades of successive Quebec premiers’ demands on immigration, social policies, equalization, in addition to Ottawa providing generous subsidies for the Bloc Québécois in parliament, a party dedicated to taking Quebec out of Canada, continues to seriously destabilize the federation.
The current Quebec CAQ provincial government has taken this one step further and quietly pursued de facto sovereignty-association through what University of Montreal constitutional law professor, Stéphane Beaulac, has called “un coup d’état legislative”. Bill 1, the passage of which was only recently been interrupted by the summer recess of the Quebec National Assembly, includes a new Quebec constitution. La Loi sur l’autonomie constitutionnelle du Québec purports to bilaterally amend the Canadian constitution, as well as elevate the collective rights of “la nation Québécoise” over individual rights and liberties, while entrenching the rights to self-determination, and to protecting Quebec’s language, culture and values.
The separatist Parti Québécois, in advance of the provincial election in October, has now issued the Livre bleu – a detailed blueprint for secession including how the independent Quebec would introduce its own currency, build up its national defence etc.
As long as any Quebec provincial premier can credibly pull out the separatist threat, Ottawa will continue to conclude special bilateral deals that destabilize federal fiscal relations.
It is time for federalists in and outside Quebec, to take the initiative away from separatists and effectively call the question on Quebec’s position in the federation. This can be done through a national consultative referendum campaign on a specific federalism reform like senate reform.
Separatists will finally have to engage on sovereignty on federalist turf, and on a federalist question that all Canadians including Quebecers will vote on.
During the national consultative referendum, Quebecers will be able to hear voices and vigorous and free debate from both federalists and separatists. Quebecers and all Canadians can review one more time our blended history and experiences over almost 300 years in building a secure, vibrant, French-speaking entity within North America and within Canada. And assess one more time how the 1982 Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, far from excluding Quebec, has in fact supported Quebec’s distinctive evolution through serious protections for the French language and culture.
I am confident that Quebecers will agree that remaining part of a renewed Canadian federation is the best choice and will vote to support reforms predicated on their remaining in the federation.
And if, as expected, a majority of Quebecers supports the proposed federalism reforms in the national consultative referendum, a good case can be subsequently made that successfully marginalizes any remaining separatist pressures.
National Consultative Referendum
A national consultative referendum is the best mechanism to bring about the crucial constitutional or quasi-constitutional change required to support practical, long-term, meaningful changes to the nuts and bolts of our federation. The consultative referendum process builds civic unity across Canada, and whatever the result of the referendum, citizens, not political elites, have the last word.
A consultative referendum provides all citizens with access to full and fair information and balanced debate within the Canadian national context. Direct citizen engagement in national discussion and debate strengthens our collective commitment to shared values and democratic ideals, and to a stronger, more functional Canadian federation.
Most importantly, a national consultative referendum directly engaging ordinary Canadians loosens the grip of the first ministers’ clique and their entourages, and sidelines self-absorbed political elites who too often do not act in the national public interest.
Canadians already participated in a successful national consultative referendum – the Charlottetown Referendum in 1992 – when a clear majority of an impressive 72% voter turnout defeated the controversial everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Charlottetown Accord (the successor to the Meech Lake Accord).
Contrary to the views of the entrenched political elites who were startled and bruised by the referendum result and instantly called the result “divisive”, the Charlottetown referendum was a unifying event for the country, and a useful precedent for citizen mobilization outside the political establishment. Canadians stepped up to the plate, assessed the proposals, and found them wanting.
At Charlottetown, the first ministers and their entourages learned that the Constitution belongs to the people of Canada, not the first ministers. For those of us who were directly involved, the successful No vote was a powerful grass-roots message to Canada’s then first ministers’ clique that the people of Canada must be heard, and that restructuring the federation to accommodate Quebec separatist pressures or for any other reason, was something that engaged all Canadians, not just first ministers. (See discussion in Part One of my eBook Canada on the Edge.)
I remain optimistic that Canadians will recognize the urgency of federal reform and support a citizen-based process. Our long-term sovereignty and security depend on a coherent, less fragmented Canada in which all citizens have confidence and trust in the fairness and integrity of our federation and are actively engaged in our collective efforts to work harmoniously together across sub-national entities in the national interest.
Deborah Coyne