This seems beside the point. Pushy is what Americans do. Indeed, we can take no more assurance from this latest five-year deal that Canadian lumber exporters will be free from harassment than we could from the original free-trade agreement, which was supposed to have guaranteed the same thing. There's no use crying about it; that is the way of the world. The only certain guarantee that the Americans will ever abide by any free- trade agreement is if they sincerely believe in free trade.

No, the really unforgivable thing about the deal was the almost complete absence of the Government of Canada from the negotiations. For this was not so much a struggle between the United States and Canada as it was between different regions within this, for want of a better word, country. In consequence, the Americans found themselves negotiating not with Canada but with the individual provinces. Ottawa, once again, was reduced to the role of chaperon.

Instead of one bargaining agent representing 30 million Canadians, with the duty and the capacity to negotiate in the larger interests of Canada - to make linkages with other issues, balance gains against losses and otherwise maximize whatever leverage we might possess - the lumber provinces, notably British Columbia, Quebec and Ontario, all but took over the discussions. With our divisions on such obvious display, the Americans did what any able negotiator would do: play the provinces off against each other and eat them all for lunch.

It didn't help that we were in a weak bargaining position from the start. It's probable that Canada's system of setting stumpage fees (the levy lumber companies pay to cut on government land) by political fiat, rather than at auction, does amount to an implicit subsidy, which may be the real reason we weren't prepared to take our case to the World Trade Organization. But where Quebec was willing to raise its stumpage fees to buy peace, British Columbia protested that it already had. So at first it was agreed that each province would feed itself to the Americans in its own way.

But this pretense of a solution raised its own objections. Where B.C. would have preferred to limit its exports "voluntarily" - a measure that might have so raised prices as actually to benefit Canadian exporters - it feared that other provinces would simply rush in to fill the void. So a national quota was proposed. But how to divide the quota among the provinces? And how, given that much of our lumber exports pass through another province before crossing the border, to enforce a system of provincial quotas?

What eventually emerged - a national quota divided not by province but by producer - was thus a matter of negotiation not with the Americans, but between the provinces! Instead of combining our efforts against a common foe, we consumed ourselves in internal rivalries. Admittedly, this may simply reveal a fundamental truth. Trade wars, ostensibly battles of nation against nation, in fact pit one interest against another within each nation: producers against consumers, importers against exporters, and so on.

But the U.S. negotiator spoke for a national government, an integrated forum where such conflicting interests might be weighed against each other. I don't say it weighed those interests correctly - the biggest losers in this dispute are not Canadian loggers, but American consumers - but it could at least do so without tearing into the national fabric. And whatever interest it chose to represent, it could call upon the full weight and power of the United States of America.

Instead, we are presented in this episode with yet another example of the federal government's increasing irrelevance. What, after all, is a federal government constituted to do? It is to represent the interests of Canadians, where these cannot adequately be represented by their provincial governments. In such matters, it is that government's sole right and responsibility to act for Canada, and it is answerable in that regard only to Canadians - not the provinces, Canadians. If there is any example of a definitively federal responsibility, international trade negotiations is surely it.

Or if we cannot think of any matter that requires a federal government - if we can just as well be represented by the several provinces, as their participation in this event suggests - then let's have done with it. And if we find we have no cause to govern ourselves as a nation, then let us stop pretending that we are one.