Whatever happened to federalism?

I have come into possession, via the usual anonymous sources, of a speech Stephen Harper delivered some years ago in Montreal. It is, I can tell you, a shocker. The views expressed therein by the then candidate for leader of the Canadian Alliance would place him squarely outside the political mainstream, at least as it has currently evolved. Here is the most obnoxious passage:

"The broad lesson of history is that Canada's natural governing coalition always includes the federalist option in Quebec, not the nationalist one.”

I’d mention another ("Our economic union is too weak because Ottawa has failed to use the powers it has under the Constitution to ensure that goods and services can freely flow across provincial borders.") but I don’t want to scare the horses. At any rate, I can safely report that Mr. Harper has repudiated these past views, if indeed he ever held them. Campaigning in Quebec this week, the Conservative leader instead embraced the tried and true Tory strategy of sucking up to the nationalists, a brilliant tactical stroke that has enabled the party to carry the province once every fifteen elections.

Mr. Harper would seem to have learned the entire nationalist repertoir, to judge by his performance. So we heard the usual promise of more powers, including the right to represent itself in international cultural forums -- instead of, you know, Canada. There was the usual doubletalk on special status -- his general preference was to treat all Canadians equally, Mr. Harper noted, but you see Quebec wants these powers, where the other provinces don’t. What's he supposed to do? Say no?

And of course, what would any discussion of Quebec’s legitimate aspirations be without gobs and gobs of money? The bilingual Mr. Harper has learned to say “fiscal imbalance” in both official languages, sounding for all the world as if the phrase actually meant something, and was not just a vacant bit of demagoguery whipped up to justify the province’s -- and provinces’ -- insatiable appetite for federal butin. There was even a mention of “domineering federalism,” an affliction from which Quebec, of all provinces, suffers least.

All in all, it was a thoroughly depressing spectacle. To the list of powers from which the federal government has already withdrawn in favour of Quebec, we would now add foreign affairs, or parts thereof -- and don’t kid yourselves, the nationalists will not be satisfied with a mere seat at UNESCO. Indeed, what was once a welcome display of “flexibility” will soon -- a matter of days, not weeks -- come to be regarded as an intolerable constraint.

And, a point that seems to elude our political class, this will happen not in spite of federalist concessions but because of them. If the only lesson Quebecers absorbed from each concession is that blackmail works, that they should never forswear the separatist “option” or fear of giving up their leverage, that would be one thing. But in fact it’s worse than that. The more we hollow out federal authority to appease nationalist demands, the more we are confirming Quebecers in the belief that they are already an independent state in all but name, that the federation is at best a kind of cocoon, from which the butterfly of a sovereign Quebec will in time emerge.

But why fret about it? It’s not as if anyone’s taking the contrary position. The Prime Minister may mouth the right words -- “We are one country and we speak with one voice, not two and not ten” -- but no one’s fooled. Indeed, he made the very same promise of a UNESCO seat before the last election. (He now claims he meant only that Quebec would be consulted, but the Tories have him chapter and verse: “Quebec should not only be seated with us at the table at UNESCO, but...”) His Heritage minister, Liza Frulla, has even proposed that Quebec could attend in place of Canada.

As the election wears on, each party outdoing the other in the goodies it would distribute to favoured interest groups, or in the special deals it would cut with this province or that, it becomes clearer that a vast gulf has opened up in Canadian politics, or rather two. There is no longer any party willing to defend a coherent vision of federalism, in Quebec or anywhere else -- and there is no longer any party arguing for smaller government.

One is led to an extraordinary realization: the two dominant political philosophies of recent times, Trudeau Liberalism and economic conservatism, have simply vanished -- disappeared from the political landscape, as if they were never there. For most of the past four decades, one or the other school of thought has been in the ascendancy. For a time in the latter part of the last decade, the Liberals seemed to offer a reasonable facsimile of both. But now? Not a trace of either. Just a shifting, shapeless mass of Libservatism.

It’s hard to detect in the Tories’ Quebec platform much intent to Stand Up For Canada. But then, that’s only their slogan in the rest of Canada.