Andrew Potter: Canada needs to be stripped to its foundations

Nobody seriously disputes that the country is profoundly broken. Fixing it might involve going back to the original point of Confederation.

By: Andrew Potter

Justin Trudeau conceded last week that Canada’s health care system is broken, in some provinces at least. This comes on the heels of previous admissions by his government that the immigration system is broken, as is the housing and rental market. Since the first step toward fixing things involves admitting you have a problem, this marks some progress. Until very recently to even suggest that Canada wasn’t grooving along like a well-oiled machine was to mark yourself out as a far-right Junior MAGA-North wannabe. 

Now all we need is for the prime minister to acknowledge that we have a serious problem with foreign interference, that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is quickly evolving into a dead letter, that yesterday’s announcement of more military funding still won’t be enough to turn things around, and that — thanks to the vaccine mandate, the carbon tax, and other federal manipulations — federalism in Canada has turned into little more than a coast-to-coast festival of recalcitrance, recrimination and regional grievance. 

There’s plenty more on that score (contracting, procurement, accountability, transparency, the party system, parliament itself, and on and on and on) but you get the point. Canada is profoundly broken. Everyone knows it. The question is, how to fix it? Or if you want to ask a deeper question: Is Canada even worth fixing? What is Canada really for, anyway? 

There are lots of ways you could come at that question. One helpful approach might be to try to remember why the country was created in the first place. 

It bears keeping in mind that there were no Canadians, in the contemporary sense, prior to 1867. That is, there did not exist a group of people who saw themselves as a people, for whom the creation of the federal state of Canada was necessary for their autonomy, their self-government and their self-determination. Canada was a project that, more than anything, was a practical response to a set of economic, security and political issues, both domestic and foreign, that were of growing concern for the disparate colonies of British North America. 

On the economic front, the repeal of the British Corn Laws in 1846, followed by the gradual repeals of the Canada Corn Act in 1849 and the preferential tariffs on timber in 1847 and 1848, made it much harder for products from the colonies to find buyers on international markets. In response to this loss of preferential treatment from the Empire, colonial merchants threatened to demand annexation by the U.S., until they received a reciprocity (free trade) agreement which lasted from 1854 until 1865. At that point,  reciprocity was abruptly cancelled by the Americans who were angry at what they saw as British support for the Confederacy. 

The American Civil War had another profound impact, in that it made it clear to the colonies how ill-prepared they were for any spillover from that conflict. If they got somehow dragged into it, or if the U.S. were to become any sort of hostile threat, the British had made it clear they didn’t have much interest in defending the colonies. Just the opposite: the British were busy trying to tidy up their North American affairs and get them off their plate; one of the big initiatives was pressure from London for a political union of the Maritime colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. 

Amidst all this was the ongoing political crisis in Canada East and West, whose forced union following the Durham Report had failed to assimilate the French Canadians as Durham hoped. Instead, it had simply led to intractable political gridlock. 

That is why when there was a meeting in Charlottetown in the summer of 1864 to discuss Maritime union, the Canadians decided to crash it, bringing with them a bigger proposal: Confederation. Uniting the colonies of British North America in a federal state could help resolve all of these growing worries: An economic union would create an internal free-trade zone, enlarging the tariff-free market for domestic goods. The increased size, scale and population of the new federation would make it easier to provide for domestic security and defence. And finally, reaffirming the principle of federalism, along with the addition of new provinces to the mix, would alleviate the toxic dynamic between French and English that had dominated the Canadas for a generation. 

It is useful to remember all this, if only to appreciate the extent to which Canada has drifted from its founding ambitions. Today, there are significant interprovincial barriers to trade in goods and services, which add an estimated average of seven per cent to the cost of goods.  Not only does Canada not have a free internal market in any meaningful sense, but the problem is getting worse, not better. This is in part thanks to the Supreme Court of Canada which continues its habit of giving preposterously narrow interpretations to the clear and unambiguous language in the constitution regarding trade so as to favour the provinces and their protectionist instincts. 

On the defence and security front, what is there to say that hasn’t been said a thousand times before. From the state of the military to our commitments to NATO to the defence and protection of our coasts and the Arctic to shouldering our burden in the defence of North America, our response has been to shrug and assume that it doesn’t matter, that there’s no threat, or if there is, that someone else will take care of it for us. We live in a fireproof house, far from the flames, fa la la la la. Monday’s announcement was interesting, but even if fully enacted — a huge if — we will still be a long way from a military that can meet both domestic and international obligations, and still a long way from the two per cent target.

As for politics, only the most delusional observer would pretend that this is even remotely a properly functioning federation. Quebec has for many purposes effectively seceded, and Alberta has been patiently taking notes. Saskatchewan is openly defying the law in refusing to pay the federal carbon tax. Parliament is a dysfunctional and largely pointless clown show. No one is happy, and the federal government is in some quarters bordering on illegitimacy. 

All of this is going on while the conditions that motivated Confederation in the first place are reasserting themselves. Global free trade is starting to go in reverse, as states shrink back from the openness that marked the great period of liberalization from the early 1990s to the mid 2010s. The international order is becoming less stable and more dangerous, as the norms and institutions that dominated the post-war order in the second half of the 20th century collapse into obsolescence. And it is no longer clear that we will be able to rely upon the old failsafe, the goodwill and indulgence of the United States. Donald Trump has made it clear he doesn’t have much time for Canada’s pieties on either trade or defence, and he’s going to be gunning for us when he is returned to the presidency later this year. 

Ottawa’s response to all of this has been to largely pretend it isn’t happening. Instead, it insists on trying to impose itself on areas of provincial jurisdiction, resulting in a number of ineffective programs — dentistry, pharmacare, daycare, and now, apparently, school lunches — that are anything but national, and which will do little more than annoy the provinces while creating more bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the real problems in areas of clear federal jurisdiction just keep piling up, but the money’s all been spent, so, shrug emoji. 

What to do? We could just keep going along like this, and follow the slow-mo train wreck that is Canada to its inevitable end. That is is the most likely scenario.

There is another option, which would be to return to the country’s founding principles of trade, security and federalism. This idea, which has been mooted in various ways over the years, would not involve the dreaded “reopening of the constitution.” It would, though, require some kind of grand bargain between Ottawa and the provinces. In exchange for the dropping of all internal barriers to trade, labour mobility and commerce (let’s repeat that: ALL), Ottawa would stop trying to impose national programs in areas where it doesn’t belong, has no expertise, and is more often than not making things worse. It would transfer the necessary taxation and spending power to the provinces, and focus on its core areas of concern and jurisdiction including internal trade and security, national defence, immigration and international trade. 

Some places can’t be renovated, they need to be gutted and rebuilt from the ground up, on the original foundations. Canada itself feels a lot like that these days.  

Andrew Potter lives in Montreal. Follow him at his newsletter Nevermind: The Forgotten History of Generation X.

---

The Line is entirely reader funded — no federal subsidy for us! If you value our work and worry about what will happen when the conventional media finishes collapsing, please make a donation today.

---

The Line is Canada’s last, best hope for irreverent commentary. We reject bullshit. We love lively writing. Please consider supporting us by subscribing. Follow us on Twitter @the_lineca. Fight with us on Facebook. Pitch us something:  lineeditor@protonmail.com