Justin Trudeau apes dad

Pierre Trudeau’s reputation as a battling liberal intellectual is an impregnable pan-Canadian memory. It will outlast Montréal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport and is as imposing as Mount Pierre Elliott Trudeau in British Columbia. It has been a spur and, often, a crutch for a generation of Liberal politicians.

Now his son will try something Dad never tried: run an election against a conservative incumbent on behalf of liberty.

Justin Trudeau’s prepared speech for the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada asserts immediately that it’s “time Liberals took back liberty” and concludes 40 minutes later on an optimistic note: “If we resist the urge to impose our personal beliefs upon our fellow citizens … we get back Canada in return.”

Only a Canadian Liberal, in third place, could suggest that Canada has gone missing, that liberty can be both the brand of Canada and the brand of his political Party as well.   

Most high-minded speeches are diminished by partisanship. This speech is propped up by its extravagant hostility toward the government of the day. Pundits report in whispers that the speech was in the works for months and that it reflects intense electoral calculation as well as Trudeau’s rising personal alarm about the vulnerable state of liberty in Harperland.

That Trudeau’s accusations are taken seriously isn’t a tribute to the morning logic of his beautifully written speech but the bile within our politics and punditry toward the Harper government. As he spoke, Trudeau ducks any discussion of legislation that does affect our liberties, legislation that is actually being worked on in committee, by working MPs. According to the same quality of dot-connecting employed by paranoids on the left now as well as the right, Harper’s hidden agenda, apparently, isn’t neo-liberal but neo-fascist.

The notion that successful applicants for Canadian citizenship should show their faces at their citizenship ceremonies is a betrayal of Canada’s brand and is unleashing dark impulses in the citizenry worthy of a drama class but nowhere else.

Our globally renowned liberal Constitution does grandfather Aboriginal treaty rights and certain regulated educational rights for Catholics. However, it doesn’t favor any god, cult, collectivity or tribal practice. We are—and we are seen to be—a rather godless sectarian country by friends and foe alike.

Surely, Muslim immigrants aren’t coming here to enrich their faith. They expect to enjoy, yes, reasonable accommodation. And they keep applying for residence and citizenship by the tens of thousands on that basis.

Plausibility applies in “core value” elections as well as elections decided on such pedestrian grounds as middle-class concerns about the future and executive competence.

Pierre Trudeau, by the way, won his three majorities by promising to be tough on disruptive Western decentralists, weak-kneed federalists, and Quebec nationalists and separatists—and, lest we forget, by promising to not raise taxes on gasoline or introduce wage and price controls. His opponents were caricatured as wobbly and less competent, not less committed to liberty than he was.  

Killing Harper’s Senate Reform (Part 2: hope and chemistry)

Harper has not responded as "nation-builders" are supposed to when their initiatives to make constitutional history are destroyed by the Supreme Court or in earlier times by provincial governments. Nation-builders are expected to pick themselves up and do something. For instance, with a touch of remorse and patriotic urgency, convene a televised First Ministers Conference to reignite the process.

Instead, with unnerving clarity, Harper observed that with the authority of the provinces in reforming the Senate now established (and that, in effect, he had no business acting on his own), it is now up to the provinces to decide what they want to do: reform it, abolish it, or simply leave as is — as a federal (not a provincial) embarrassment.

This "I’ve-got-more-practical-and-popular-things-to-do" response has annoyed statesman-like politicians like Bob Rae and infuriated statesman-chasing journalists like Andrew Cohen who insist that worthy PMs keep leading, just more humbly and more nicely.

Myth has it that the great ones make nice.

This is pure spin. It serves the "personal chemistry" school of literary nonfiction and the industry around such pseudo-new events as Question Period and First Ministers conferences. It’s a school of commentary that kicks sour losers on the way down and panders to winner on the way up.

Core Liberals and core Conservatives, I’m sure, would cringe at the suggestion that the harmonization of Ontario and Canada’s sales taxes (the HST) was pulled off because Stephen Harper and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty had "personal chemistry." The notion, as well, that Harper and Barack Obama could work as brothers on the nationalization of GM and Chrysler and can’t now on the Keystone XL pipeline because their relationship has gone south is again spin.

Political circumstances pull leaders together and political circumstances pull them apart.

Harper’s inclination to leave the next move to the provinces, in fact, could lead to an elected Senate — if an influential number of Canadians would support reformers and punish reactionaries. The trigger for constitutional reform needn’t only be a Prime Minister in Ottawa trying to honor an election promise of years gone by. The premier of a powerful province, for instance, could break the ice.

There is a glorious precedent.

Pierre Trudeau’s success finally in Canadianizing and amending the British North American Act didn’t depend on his expertise, his creativity, his energy, or his charm. The camera loved Pierre Trudeau — but other politicians didn’t and wouldn’t have lifted a finger merely to inflate his name in Canada’s history books.

Nevertheless, circumstances then were compelling — inviting. A solemn promise by all federalist parties and governments to reform the Canadian constitution had been made to Quebecers in the midst of an independence referendum. And the Premier of Ontario William Davis, in the fall of 1979, publicly and formally threw his support behind both the unilateral patriation of the constitution and an entrenched charter of rights and freedoms.

To put it crudely, the careful Progressive Conservative premier of half of English-speaking Canadian voters offered a Liberal Prime Minister from Quebec a bullet and a rose: an invitation to act unilaterally without the unanimous consent of the provinces (if the next round of constitutional conferences ended in deadlock) and a seconder for a rights charter in order to mobilize public support.

Rather than waiting for a lovable PM, there is a scenario today for putting our old one back to work.  

If, after Ontario’s election, the Premier of Ontario were to join Alberta and off-again, on-again Saskatchewan and British Columbia in formally endorsing a constitutional amendment to elect senators for terms between the 9 to 12 years House of Commons has supported, all of that would be in doubt would be whether the four Atlantic governments or three with Quebec would want to continue learning the name of their next senator by reading a PMO press release.

Would they have the nerve to argue that direct democracy is still a dangerous Yankee idea or that not embracing it now will lead to a sweeter deal off in the future?

All would be quickly revealed and, after the normal intergovernmental discussions that go on constantly right now, Harper could ask for signatures on an agreed joint resolution. (Heh, for the sake of equitable exposure on the National, surely he would agree to host a one-day First Ministers Conference.)

Perfectionists for the status quo, like Justin Trudeau, tell us that this "let’s at least elect them" scenario shouldn’t happen because Alberta and BC’s Senate shares are too small today. Apparently, Alberta’s proposal — and practice — is too generous to the rest of Canada. Before anyone joins Alberta in democratizing the Senate, someone truly stupid must ask Quebec and Atlantic Canada to surrender nearly half their Senate seats.

Two comments. With only six seats, Alberta is the second-biggest loser in the current allocation of Senate seats and still favors nationwide Senate elections as a first step toward a democratic and effective second chamber. The West will keep pressing for further reforms and, also, will still have a credible veto on other suggestions to empower the Senate, if they can’t secure a fair compromise on Senate seats in the future.

(BTW: Americans are not innumerate. Californians and Texans know that voters in Rhode Island and Maine have ten times more weight. Yet neither Texans nor Californians want their two senators appointed by their governors or blue-ribbon committees. Nor are they threatening to leave the Union unless New England is cut back to two US Senate seats, in total.)

Of course, the elected premier of Ontario may demur. No politician uses political capital just to help an unpopular Prime Minister make history. Also, there’s no ennobling national challenge for our middling leaders to rise to — like the weight of an approaching referendum that could shatter the political power of Central Canada, for instance. 

Nevertheless, spreading democracy in Ottawa and, thereby, girding federalism for possible future separatist attacks (from east or west) should be rather popular amongst Ontarians — certainly easier than entrenching French language rights was only a generation ago

The above provincial imitative may be what Harper is wishing for — unless he wants history to record only that he focused “like a laser on balancing the budget.”

Otherwise, if I was him, I’d destroy any chance of any progress by rudely asking the three Ontario candidates for Bill Davis’s job whether they’re prepared to exercise their awesome constitutional power by declaring themselves on this one constitutional question.

Scotland’s Quebec touch: a ‘sovereignty-association’ referendum

"Sovereignty-association" isn’t a new idea. It’s a complicated and rather unemotional concept and has been defeated before. Free trade, however, isn’t a new idea either. Yet in 1776, Scotland’s Adam Smith and his book Wealth of Nations launched it’s eventual global takeover.

In the 1960s and 1970s, nationalists assumed that if the superpowers’ Cold War ended without blowing us up, distinct societies of viable size could achieve genuine national independence. Canadians and nationalists in the province of Quebec imagined that they could manage their affairs independently of the US and, conceivably, of each other. Consequently, when the René Lévesque sovereigntist government asked Quebecers in 1980 for a mandate to negotiate merely a new partnership — ‘sovereignty-association’ — the Government of Canada responded with scorn.

It was a sleazy trick. Quebec nationalists, like serious nationalists everywhere, surely would never stick to any arrangement that would significantly limit their national power. In two referendums, Ottawa insisted that Lévesque’s model was merely a Trojan horse; inside its clapboard shell crouched wild-eyed Anglo-haters, with fascist undergarments. Pierre Trudeau would snip that his ideas were both naïve and deceitful. 

Last week, in a 667-page plan, Scotland’s nationalist first minister Alex Salmond put forward a similar sovereignty-association proposal in a much calmer time — a time when nationalist romantics are less certain and taken less seriously. Political interdependence is now the normal way groups of affluent and civilized people organize their affairs.

Two huge, loose federations — the Eurozone and the United States — manage the world’s two biggest currencies, their open markets and business cycles, while the citizens in their dozens of sovereign member states manage what they don’t assign to the two giant associations. (Canadians, Englishmen, Quebecers, and Scots prosper today, in large measure, because these two gigantic concoctions work.)

It’s unsurprising and unimportant that the Government of Great Britain rejected Scotland’s proposals before the referendum; it’s the status quo’s nature to tell us that change causes trouble. However, it’s not reasonable for resolute liberal journals like The Economist to complain that Scotland’s plan is too utilitarian and too optimistic at the same time:

“He [Salmond] would also have to negotiate EU membership, continued use of sterling, the division of Britain’s national debt, NATO membership and much else besides. Voting for independence would be an act of faith.”

Certainly, the island of Great Britain has had limited experience with federal-style government. The English political class long-believed that even their descendants couldn’t make decentralized federal systems work in North America and that "Europeans" couldn’t make them work in Europe as well. Nevertheless, the elite that will do most of the fear mongering in Scotland’s referendum debate will, at the same time, deeply treasure their international alliances and associations and the acts of faith — as negotiators and traders — that made Britain great.

If Scotland votes yes, British leaders will set their feelings aside and, by morning, start working on how to maintain every mechanism and institution with the Scots that serves their mutual interests.

"Sovereignty-association" isn’t unworkable. It simply may not be necessary for Scotland.

Fundamentally, it is just another way to think about how to encourage rigorous, responsible local democracy within a wider association. It’s too bad that on this continent it is only advocated as a way to break up federations rather than as a way to create a closer union of Canadians and Americans.

Democratizing the Senate despite Canada’s reactionaries

In Canada, provincial governments of every stripe are insisting that the Supreme Court tell the country whether legislation to facilitate advisory elections on the appointment of Senators is constitutional. The conservative provinces and the provincial government that doesn’t believe in Canada (as well as all the provinces to Harper’s left) stand shoulder-to-shoulder before the Court. And they are complaining that the federal legislation that neither binds their provinces, nor future Parliaments, is unconstitutional because it could to lead to the creation of an elected Senate — without their participation or purchase.

Only in Canada? Thank goodness.

Not one premier disputes that today’s Senate is illegitimate. Premiers and their puzzling young academic advisors, however, are loath to say why. They speak of corruption, public disenchantment, and the sad compulsion of it members and their parent — a "dictatorial" PMO — to be partisan. They acknowledge that the Senate has never been as sober as its binge-drinking champion John A. Macdonald promised 146 years ago.

Premiers don’t admit, however, that even at its imagined best, it is an anachronism; it’s a legislative body, with legislative influence, that isn’t elected by the people. And its members needn’t fear what the people think as long as they are there.  

The premiers are telling the Supreme Court that Harper can consult his conscience, blue-ribbon Canadians, premiers, and his party brass in each province, but not the people in each province. That would be fundamental change; it would shortly make the Senate — as it did in the U.S. — a democratic and, therefore, a legitimate legislative institution.

Premiers can’t come out as reactionaries fearful of direct democracy because that would embarrass their supporters. Otherwise, they would have eagerly taken Harper and Alberta to the Court years ago, while four senators were being appointed according to the will of four advisory elections in Alberta. Nevertheless, they are.

Court activist Justice Rosalie Abella suggested to the federal government’s lawyer: “You’re not inviting us to look at the bigger picture … of how Canada works.”

Exactly. That’s what Harper is not asking the Court to do. Please, Harper is requesting, don’t tell us to try to put into Canada’s written constitution first what the people may freely do — in consultative elections, in each province, over time.

Certainly, Harper is trying to reduce irrevocably the powers of majority prime ministers by making Parliament as a whole more responsive and credible across the populace. Also, he’s belittling the presumption of premiers that they alone speak for province-wide interests. No future prime minister would dare repeal legislation that simply invites voters to declare formally who they want to represent them in the Senate.

Still, as a constitutional opportunist, Harper is in good company.

Pierre Trudeau freely threatened to tell the Parliament of Westminster — Canada’s constitutional court before the Constitution Act of 1982 — to “hold its nose,” to respect the letter of the law, and make the changes to the BNA Act that Canada’s Parliament wanted, with or without the support of the provinces. His threat of unilateral federal action shattered the status quo because it was legal.

Westminster was sorely tempted to look at the “bigger picture.” But, it kept still. So should the Supreme Court today.

“The Best Prime Minister Canada Never Had.” Why Change?

For some 30 years, a few of us were secretly warmed by the unique glory of having worked for Robert Lorne Stanfield: the man thoughtful Canadians came to recognize as “The Best Prime Minister Canada Never Had.”  

A harmless little gift that happens rarely in any ruthless business.

Canada carried on united. Stanfield’s special recognition costs taxpayers nothing and, being permanently hypothetical, can never disappoint. It affirmed the tolerance of Liberals for losers, and it didn’t influence the fate of his Progressive Conservative Party or dim the luminous stature of the word “Trudeau” — the name of the prime minister who beat RLS three times.

Recently, however, this enduring conceit became a cloud: a prize that floats around according to the whim of op-ed writers in Canada’s paper of settlement: The Globe and Mail. John Duffy seized ample space this summer to invite former one-term premier of Ontario and interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada Bob Rae to “lay claim to the status of The Best Prime Minister Canada Never Had.”

Treacherous waters, John.

No respected voice in the Liberal Party — Canada’s most successful closet conservative institution — should steal our hard-earned prize and, then, offer it airily to one of his own.

Counterfactual histories, as you must know, only cause trouble for winners.Your Party won’t restore its dominion by tormenting vanquished Tories or by sideswiping other coast-to-coast failures, including New Democrat leaders: Tommy Douglas and Jack Layton.

Besides, Robert Stanfield never laid claim to this meager prize and would have been annoyed if one of his high-profile admirers had taken up space in the Globe to make the case. He would have much preferred that he or she had done a better job of singing his praises before his last election, rather than after he lost.

Seriously.

Unless an equitable, regionally sensitive, transparent process is put in place to award — or re-award — the title on a regular basis, the fairest thing to do is leave this empty prize with Stanfield. Please.

After all, unlike Bob Rae and other promising losers, Bob Stanfield actually won four majorities as premier of Nova Scotia, then won a national leadership convention, and, thereby, was the official leader of the opposition when he was defeated time and again by the greatest Liberal campaigner of the last 100 years.