The separatist fever that first took hold in Quebec in the 1960s would have broken far sooner had it not met a receptive response from the rest of Canada. Canada was the problem, all could agree, whether or not separatism was the solution. Hence those interminable meetings of the First Ministers over the years, called to consider what further "offers" of federal powers, beyond those conceded in previous rounds, could persuade Quebec to stay.

The notion that the answer to separatism -- a repudiation of federal authority -- was to dismantle the federal authority was revealing, as was the bedrock assumption on which the whole exercise was based: that separation was a legitimate option in a federation. No other federation accepts this. It is, indeed, a denial of the very principle of federalism.

For if a province, any province, may come and go as it pleases, then the territory of that province does not belong to the country as a whole, but to the people of that province, who themselves are not part of some larger whole, the Canadian nation, but merely parties to a contract, as if between sovereign states.

That separatists should believe this is not surprising. What was surprising is that their supposed opponents in the rest of Canada believed it, too. For it makes federalism impossible. People will not consent to be governed by those they regard as "others." If the people of one province do not regard themselves to be part of the same nation as the rest, they will be unwilling to assign powers and responsibilities to the federal government. They will see it, not as "our" government, but "theirs." That's troublesome enough in one province. But if every province feels the same way, federalism is finished. It is precisely in order to have a federal government, answerable to the people of the federation as a whole and only to them, that federations federate. The federal government is federalism's raison d'etre. Without it, what you have is not federalism, but a league of nations.

Well, now separatism has subsided, at long last. But provincialism remains. The new premier of Quebec, Jean Charest, while disavowing separatism or even constitutional change, nevertheless talks of a federation in which the federal government is more or less a ward of the provinces. If it is no longer expected to formally transfer powers to the provinces, it is because the provinces have taken up residence in them already, as constitutional squatters: hence the demands that international trade treaties, for example, should be subject to provincial approval, or that the Senate should be chosen from lists of provincial nominees.

The federal role, in this scheme, is limited to supplying the provinces with cash they would otherwise have to raise themselves. (The newest expression of this age-old demand is the invented controversy over the so-called "fiscal imbalance.") Otherwise, it is commanded to mind its place and keep out of sight. Just to make sure, the Premier of Alberta now toys with creating a jurisdictional "firewall" around the province, to protect it against intrusion from the federal government -- you know, them.

One could easily forget, listening to this, that Canada's federal government is by many measures already the weakest of any federation in the world. Notably, this is the only federation in which the federal government lacks that most essential federal authority, the power to enforce an internal common market. Well, no, it has the authority, legally: most scholars agree it could do so, under the "trade and commerce" power. What it lacks is the will. It lacks the will because it lacks the legitimacy, and it lacks the legitimacy because -- well, you have only to look at this week's National Post poll of attitudes in Western Canada to see why.

Western Canadians do not regard the federal government as "their" government, because for the most part it isn't their government. I don't just mean that the party in power for most of the last several decades is also the party they have consistently rejected throughout that period.

For one-party rule is itself a symptom of a much broader problem: a malfunctioning democracy.

No matter which party they elect, or what part of the country they are from, Canadians can feel little sense of connection to the federal government, because they have so little control over it. The members they elect are largely powerless -- unless they are Cabinet ministers, and even these are little more, as it has been said, than a focus group for the Prime Minister. The composition of the House, by virtue of our antiquated electoral system, bears little resemblance to the votes of the electors, entrenching political divisions along regional rather than ideological lines: More than half the seats in the governing caucus -- a majority of the majority -- were returned from one province, where the party did not even win a majority of the popular vote.

Feeling so disenfranchised at the federal level (71% of Westerners say their province's interests are poorly represented in Ottawa), it is no wonder that many see the answer in reclaiming powers closer to home.

Indeed, a plurality, 40%, now see their provincial premiers as their representatives in national politics, rather than the people they elected to the job. The danger in this is not that the country will come apart, but that it will simply drift, unable to address important national questions in a coherent way, because it is unwilling to entrust the necessary powers to the proper constitutional authority.

Democratic reform, then, is not merely desirable as an end in itself. It is essential to reviving the legitimacy of federal authority, and with it our capacity to act together, in fulfillment of Renan's classic definition of a nation: a group of people who have done great things together in the past, and who hope to do great things in future.