The Voice of Reason

Andrew Potter seems to be all over the place these days. He's got the Rebel Sell Blog and he's also been babysitting for Andrew Coyne and he's also a new columnist at Macleans.

He's also co-author of one of my recent favorite books. I've been reading his blog for a while and have become well aware of his capacity for contrarian insight.

Then I read his latest cloumn.

Then my head fell apart.

After I had put myself back together I got to thinking about it. If I might pull a couple of quotes:

The working assumption of the report is that Ottawa has a governance problem. The picture Gomery draws is a familiar sketch of the federal government as a "friendly dictatorship," with a centralized executive dominating a politicized civil service, scarcely overseen by an absentee parliament.

The problem, of course, is separatism. Gomery's firewalls approach assumes that there is such a thing as "normal politics," a sphere within which policy can be decided by politicians and then farmed out to the bureaucrats with minimal oversight. Not in Canada. Not when everything the federal government does -- from the appointment of the governor general to the decision to change the windows in a federal building in Ottawa -- is packed with dynamite. A national unity crisis can appear out of nowhere, which is why four decades' worth of prime ministers have felt the need to concentrate the real federal business within an ever-tightening circle.

Now this is something I had never considered. I've obviously thought a great deal about the rise of the Quebec Seperatist movement and the obvious ways that has affected the political landscape. I've also given a great deal of thought to the challenges our government faces when is comes to democracy and transparency and effectiveness. I've just never put the two side by side.

For a long time I hated Trudeau as a Prime Minister, I've gradually grown out of this emotional fog but I've found it hard to forgive the man for the manner in which he built the modern PMO. Later Prime Ministers entrenched what he did, but Trudeau was the primary architect of much of the centralisation of cabinet. I've always maintained that the last Prime Minister who oversaw a cabinet that functioned as it should was Pearson, but even Pearson had a habit of putting national unity front and center. The following passage appeared in more that one speech:

"There must be a determination to understand the real nature of Canada and the forces eroding that nature; to recognize the peril of serious internal divisions; to recognize also the competition and challenge of the changing world community and the competitive world marketplace; to realize the opportunities of national strength through unity and the fatal weakness of division and discord."

Perhaps more elegantly put, from the Throne Speech in 1967:

Our country was not founded in 1867. It is far more deeply rooted in time than that. But, one hundred years ago, our predecessors – men of many races, creeds and tongues – embarked upon a great exercise in statecraft of which we, today, are the trustees. They laid the foundations. They anchored them in a fundamental sense of unity that generations of conflict had taught was vital to the common weal. With this realization they erected a structure of government for the freedom, welfare and prosperity of all who might come in time to inhabit the land. They built according to a federal plan because they new that unity, with cultural and regional diversity could be harnessed to a positive and enriching role in no other way.

As the seperatist movement ascended to it's most radical positions of the 1970s and the FLQ crisis, Trudeau found himself in what was essentially an undeclared civil war. While the level of tension has abated and the methods have maintained a higher degree of moderation, Potter is right to say that this state of affairs has not changed in four decades. This perspective requires a linking of the issues that originally brought me into the political process (democratic reform, good government etc.) with the issue of national unity.

When the enemy at the gates announces something like this, I personally get a little worried (Although I had predicted the same during the election). Especially when Mr. Harper seems to be under the impression that "a national concensus" is utterly beyond the grasp of the federal government and the "little nations" of Canada's provinces should be allowed to develop independently.

For us Liberals, I think this means that the process of renewal must centre first and foremost around a renewed conception of the Canadian Confederation and for me this requires an appeal to history. The modern Liberal Party is so much enamoured with Mr. Trudeau that we have no sense of the visions of past men, great Canadians all: Pearson, King, Laurier, Cartier, Lafontaine, Baldwin, Howe. We too easily forget that Canada is a nation with rich history and long traditions. Our foundations run deep and we must understand them if we are maintain their strength.

Objections?