We are not the European Union. This country is not a treaty among sovereign states, dependent upon the good will of the signatories for its continued existence. So for all the breathless media interest in the subject, the future of the nation does not actually depend upon whether or not the premiers choose to discuss "national unity" at their meeting this week. It is a matter of supreme unimportance.

It only seems important if you accept all the hidden premises on which the national unity industry is built. But once you accept them -- if in fact you are even aware of having accepted them -- there is nothing left to discuss.

Implicit in the insistence of business groups and others on the premiers' participation in solving the national unity crisis, indeed in the very notion that such a crisis exists, is a set of propositions about the nature of the federation, which taken together can lead to only one conclusion: the effective neutering of the federal government, if not the actual dismantling of the federation.

What does it mean, first, to say that national unity is in doubt? It means that Canada, unlike most other nations on earth, is divisible: that the people living in one part of the country may decide, on their own, to withdraw from the federation, even if that means the effective destruction of the country.

And, what is more, there is nothing that the people in the rest of the country can do to stop them. For if they could, then national unity would not be in doubt, and there would be nothing for the premiers to discuss.

Canada, it would seem, is in fact something less than a treaty: for even a treaty requires the consent of both parties before it can be revoked, or else some clause setting out the terms on which one party or the other could withdraw. You see how much has already been slipped by us, then, merely by invoking the crisis of national unity. A nation, if self-governing, cannot be divisible, unless the nation itself chooses to be divided. So Canada, if divisible, cannot be a nation, but simply contiguous bits of territory; and even these are held together not in any firm or fixed way, but only by perpetual negotiations among the constitutent parts, any one of whom could bolt for the exit at any moment.

Well, now: who is to conduct those negotiations? If Canada were a nation, a single sovereign people who agree to govern themselves collectively, the business of mediating internal differences would logically be given over to the elected representatives of the people as a whole, assembled in a national Parliament, while matters of a merely local nature, assuming a federal form of government were established, would be assigned to the provincial legislatures. The fathers of Confederation must have thought we were a nation, for that is the system of government they adopted. "Merely local" is the precise phrase they used.

But if there is no Canadian nation, but only the provinces -- as the doctrine of divisibiliy implies -- then the task of holding the federation together can only be accomplished by the premiers. Indeed, once the idea takes root that the premiers, not members of Parliament, are the legitimate ambassadors of one group of Canadians to another, there is no room left for any federal role in the government of the country whatever -- or none but what the premiers give it. Any independent exercise of federal authority of any kind may be seen as one part of the country presuming to impose its will on another.

Try to think of a jurisdiction that, according to the principles of classical federalism, would normally be federal. Enforcing the common market, say?

Well, no: in the name of national unity, the premiers are urged to resume negotiating the reduction of internal trade barriers among themelves.

Perhaps they will, eventually, but at the price of destroying any notion of an overriding national interest to which the interests of the provinces are subordinate.That is why it had to be negotiated: because there is no national interest, but only the conflicting ambitions of the provinces.

Even external trade is no longer seen as an exclusively federal power: at their last meeting, earlier this year, the western premiers allowed as how they thought the provinces should be given powers here as well. Why, they asked, should it be left to the federal government to negotiate international trade agreements, given their effects on the provinces? And weren't the premiers already part of the Team Canada process?

And so it goes. Immigration? That, too, is rapidly being handed over to the provinces. Monetary policy? The provinces want the right to choose the directors of the Bank of Canada. The Supreme Court? The provinces want to nominate appointees. God knows what new demands we will hear this week.

It is not mere vainglory that drives the premiers, wherever and whenever they are asssembled, to demand more and more powers from the federal government. The logic of their position compels it.