If the new government is to restore legitimacy to Parliament, and so reverse the drift to devolution, it will have to take action on both fronts at once. On the one hand, the government needs to find some means of making itself the conspicuous agent of the national interest, not only at the cost of open conflict with the provinces, but with that very purpose in mind. On the other hand, it can only successfully project federal power into new areas of national debate if at the same time it takes steps to democratize the exercise of that power: to draw Canadians in, even as it is reaching out to them.

Fortunately, the government does not have to look far to find useful ideas on either hand. It can steal them from its two main rivals in the recent election, the Reform and Conservative parties.

From the Tory platform, the government might pluck the proposed Inter-provincial Trade Commission, whose mandate would be to strike down barriers to trade within the Canadian economic union. It is not entirely clear what the Tories intended this agency to look like, but one thing is abundantly evident: the regulation of internal trade is a legitimate federal power, as it is in every other federation.

That successive federal governments have been too afraid to exercise their responsibilities is no excuse for not doing so now.

The federal government is entrusted with exclusive jurisdiction over "trade and commerce" under the 1867 Constitution, which even separatists recognize: recent Supreme Court rulings suggest it need have no fear of legal challenge if it were to establish the IPTC on its own, as a federal agency, whatever ill feelings this may engender in the provinces.

This is surely the point. We don't need another agreement among the provinces to lower trade barriers, even supposing it would prove any more effective than the last. That is the sort of deal that could be struck between sovereign states, as the separatists are only too happy to remind us. The whole advantage of a federation is that it makes possible more enforceable arrangements, and the whole potential for such enforcement lies in the existence of a single, supreme regulatory authority, whose sovereignty in this regard supersedes those of the provinces. What's that spell? F-e-d-e-r-a- l.

But a federal power grab of this sort would be of more than economic value.

Its more compelling role would be to serve as a demonstration project in uncooperative federalism: to put the provinces on notice that the federal government does not have to ask for their permission to perform those duties the constitution assigns to it. In so doing, it would send an electric signal through the public consciousness. For a federal government to be so uncharacteristically bold, it must believe it answers to a higher sovereignty than the premiers; in acting as a national government, it assumes a nation.

Who knows where such thoughts might lead?

But could it carry the public with it? Might such a move be taken as an assault on local democracy? Here's where Reform's ideas come in. Many people, even in British Columbia, say they would accept a greater federal role in the nation's affairs if they felt that they in turn had a greater say in federal decisions. That is difficult to change, so long as Members of Parliament put themselves above the wishes of the people, and so long as Parliament itself is so completely under the control of the government.

There are limits to what is politically possible, of course, at least in the short term. We're not likely to see a Triple-E Senate any time soon, for example.

But Parliament could show a greater openness to such instruments of democratic participation as referendums, starting with constitutional amendments. If Reform's pet idea, recall, is too radical a means of making individual M.P.s more accountable to their constituents, surely it would not be too much to ask the government to relax Canada's ferocious system of party discipline, and allow more free votes. There's no reason why any bill need automatically be considered a confidence motion, unless the government so stipulates.

There has never been a better opportunity to pursue either of these initiatives, given the composition of the present Parliament. What are the Tories going to do, attack their own platform? Is Reform about to come out against free votes? At worst, the government would unite the different regional parties around a common plan. At best, it would completely snooker them.