At a news conference kicking off the fall session of the House of Commons, Tory leader Jean Charest listed what he took to be the nation's most urgent priorities. They were, (1) "jobs" - but you knew that, (2) firing David Collenette, and (3) the failure of the prime minister to attend an international AIDS conference in Vancouver - an example, he said, of Canada's "diminished place" in the world.

Speaking of diminished places, it should by now be clear to everyone that the action, politically speaking, has shifted irrevocably away from Ottawa.

As if the prospect of 50 years of Liberal governments were not already stark enough, what remains of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition seems determined to corral itself in irrelevancy. The real opposition, the real "government in waiting," is not to be found in any federal party. It is the premiers.

Lucky, lucky Grits. The party hardly needed an issue to win the next election. But now the Liberals have been handed an opponent of which they could have only dreamed: the grandly named first ministers, the ones who put the "provincial" in politician. If the party is willing to seize the opportunity, it could use the election not just to cement its grip on power, but to make that power mean something at last: to restore the legitimacy of federal authority, at a time when it has never been more in doubt.

At the height of their clumsy attempted putsch at last month's gathering in Jasper, the vainer premiers boasted that they and they alone would now determine national standards in social programs. "While some top-down federalists claim the provinces can't or won't take a national approach, I say we can," purred Ontario's Mike Harris. "National standards do not have to be federal government standards." Oh? And just where does Mr. Harris find the evidence for this brave assertion? Where in recent history is there even one example of provinces taking "the national approach?" Some would like to find it in the vague sketch of a new national blood agency the health ministers threw at the canvas last week, but let's remember its parentage: the all-province Canadian Blood Agency, which allowed thousands of transfusion recipients to fall through the cracks between its jurisdictional jealousies.

Perhaps we are to look to the emergence of a national securities commission - at present, Canada's four working stock markets are regulated by no fewer than 12 separate provincial and territorial commissions - sparing us the embarrassment of being the only country in the developed world without such a body. Don't buy on that tip: negotiations have so far secured the agreement of every province except Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, which is to say the only four that matter. Ontario has at least been good enough to name its price: $200 million in federal compensation.

But then, as far as "taking the national approach" goes, that's pretty cheap. It took a billion-five to get the four Atlantic provinces to agree, sort of, to half- harmonize their sales taxes with the federal GST. As for the rest, the spirit of nation-building Harris claims to detect has not yet risen far enough to relieve Canada of the ignominy of being the only country in the developed world - again - with two separate and unco-ordinated sales tax regimes.

Where, then? Nationwide scholastic tests, the kind that might allow provincial school systems to be meaningfully compared? The Council of Education Ministers have been talking about it for years. All that they have been able to agree upon is to test at two levels, in two subjects - and that hedged about with so many riders and qualifications as to make the exercise all but pointless. Canada remains, well, the only country in the developed world without a national education policy.

We're running out of places to look. Should we find provincial co-operation in the field of welfare, where 30 years of provincial obstructionism blocked every federal attempt at reform? Or the Canada Pension Plan, the whole fund lent to the provinces at giveaway rates, with no possibility of change without their agreement? Maybe a co-ordinated national fiscal strategy, such as Europe has devised? They can't even agree on common accounting standards.

Oh, I've got one. The agreement on internal trade. You remember: the one negotiated between the premiers, as if between sovereign states? The one that showed "federalism works?" The one that is now collapsing under the weight of its own rickety, exception-riddled architecture? And we're going to run the health care system on these lines?

Run, prime minister. Run these jumped-up parish-pumpers back to their capitals. Promise never to hold another first ministers' conference again.

Watch the nation rise, and rejoice.