New Year, New Leader, Last Chance?

Though he's not there yet, Stéphane Dion will be the last prime minister Canada has with a chance to save the country.

I don't say he'll be the last prime minister, but the last one who can rally all regions around a new concept of our country.

As importantly, perhaps more so, he will be the last prime minister to have a chance to develop a decent environmental record, not just in terms of Kyoto, but for what may seem like micro environmental problems elsewhere but are "macro" to those Canadians who see their environment crumbling in many key areas -- the canary in that mine being the fish situation on both coasts. Canada should be leading the way, not copping out because others aren't moving.

Canadians like to imagine that as long as Quebec is placated, there's no need to worry our little heads about national unity.

But Quebec is rather like poison ivy -- just as you think you've found a cure, it re-occurs. We know the issues. If we proceed down the road plotted and made famous by Brian Mulroney we will not only try to romance Quebec with financial goodies but with constitutional concessions as well. But if you accept the Trudeau doctrine -- which I do -- then you believe that to keep Quebec by making special constitutional arrangements will only mean the country goes out with not a bang but a whimper.

Quebec got the veto

We have, at the governmental level at any rate, opted for the Mulroney doctrine even though Canadians in the 1992 Charlottetown Accord and the General Election the year after emphatically rejected it.

Since 1992, Federal governments have assumed that the people didn't really mean what they said, thus we had the Chrétien government in 1995 and 1996 resolving to treat Quebec as a "distinct society" and exercise its own veto over constitutional change to, in effect, give Quebec a veto, all in spite of the Charlottetown referendum and the wipeout of the Conservatives the following year. (The government would point out that they also promised vetoes to four other regions but that is tendentious in the extreme since Quebec and Ontario are the only regions that want to stonewall changes agreed to by a solid majority of the regions.)

We must conclude that if Ottawa doesn't swear off bribing Quebec with power and fails to restore the country to the 1992 Charlottetown vote, the Mulroney policy will continue to be the practice, a practice that will certainly lead to Trudeau's "out with a whimper rather than a bang."

For those who say "you can't go back," I answer that if this is true, no country under a dictatorship could return to democracy.

Convene constituent assembly

Besides, I don't say go back and stay there. My plea, which I've written about elsewhere, is for a national constituent assembly to seek a new modus vivendi so Canada can fulfil its promise with a constitution and instruments of government suitable to the next 150 years, not the last 150.

There is the second problem: influences, expanding daily, which affect the reasons Canada stays together. Before continuing down that road, let me state clearly that there are a lot of very good reasons why Canadians, for the most part, want to stay together. That I don't state these here doesn't in any way diminish their importance. They should be obvious. The fact remains there are troubling new influences many of which start and play out outside our borders.

We had a glimpse of this with the Softwood Lumber dispute which was settled by Ottawa on terms that satisfied Quebec and Ontario and angered British Columbia. There is no doubt in this British Columbian's mind that if Ontario or Quebec had relied on lumber to the extent B.C. does, the federal government would have fought a hell of lot harder and longer.

There are other matters that have become Ottawa traditions, such as subsidizing the hell out of Central Canadian industries, the most notable being Bombardier. Special considerations for big Central Canadian industry, very much including the banks, also amount to subsidies. This is part of Canada's economic way of life, going back to the national policy of Sir John A. Macdonald, which, in essence, made Western Canada hewers of wood to be sent back to Ontario, where the industrial results were sent back to Western Canadians at inflated prices protected by Ottawa tariffs. That policy remains part of the Ottawa psyche.

Oil and globalization

I will confine my argument to two points, both of which could and no doubt have consumed volumes.

Oil and gas is on everyone's mind, though we are mostly concerned when gas for our car hits $1.25 a litre or heating our homes becomes prohibitive. When we're angry, we rail at government and industry for ignoring the fact that the supply is finite and not moving towards other energy sources. When gas goes back to 90 cents, we bitch about something else. The trouble is that when we show our concerns, they are not only right but dramatically understated. The oil market can be and is manipulated by the suppliers as when Saudi Arabia, at President Bush's request, dramatically increased its supply and kept the price down. The fact is that we have probably "peaked," which is to say that the world is using more oil than it discovers.

Here's how that plays out politically at home. As the supply decreases and the price increases alarmingly, we will have big trouble not only with our needs at home but even more importantly, our industrial requirements. It's rather like when the power is shut down: you suddenly realize how much you depend upon it.

Two provinces won't be suffering, however. Alberta and to a lesser extent British Columbia will profit handsomely. As the royalties pour in, the far western provinces will be filling the coffers and the blue-eyed sheiks will be out in their Rolls convertibles again. Because God blessed these provinces with a resource everyone else needs but doesn't have and can't afford, we'll be in a national crisis that will make the National Energy Program of 1981 look like a kids' pillow fight.

There is, believe it or not, an even worse curse on the horizon: globalization. Not only will we find our natural resources like lumber badly outbid by places like Russia, which doesn't worry about the environment, worker safety or selling raw logs; not only will we be less and less able to compete with foreign imports; more and more services will be done abroad and those who feel safest will be hit the hardest.

Dion's challenge

Let's look at two safe and cosy professions.

Medicine makes its basic buck not on cutting you up but prescribing drugs and other treatments. How long will it be before you answer your doctor's questions online to India with the necessary drugs supplied from Calcutta? And how long before you'll be getting surgeries done in Mexico by superb surgeons at prices nearly all can afford, including airfare?

Try to keep from soiling your hankie, but how long will it be before the large law firms find that much of their gravy money is likewise earned abroad? Many law firms have already set up large international firms or united with existing ones, but what about the local legal business? Why should anyone pay $1000 for a will when a few questions answered online and $100 will do the trick? My point is that it won't only be the less popular and cheaper jobs that will be sucked away, but that no one is safe.

National Unity...huge ongoing environmental problems very much including the need to find power with the least resultant footprint...Canada having to pay huge oil prices to Canadians lucky enough to live where there's oil...jobs flying offshore while it seems that everything we buy is made in China and all our services come from phone operators in Texas and our credit card payments go to India. The problems are substantial both in quantity and complication.

I don't know if Stéphane Dion can meet, identify and solve the problems...perhaps no one could do that. It's just that to me he seems the only option that makes any sense to anyone who wants the nation to stay together, recognizes that this means much more than just keeping Quebec in, is serious about the environment and knows that the new global economy presents huge challenges that Canadians must face with answers, not slogans.

I leave you with this, and it's pretty thin gruel, I concede. Stéphane Dion is the frankest and most knowledgeable politician I have ever interviewed. Perhaps, given our track record, that utterly disqualifies him. But cynicism aside, with Dion I think the country's in there with a chance.

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