Confederation: The Ambiguous Bargain

Confederation: The Ambiguous Bargain J.R. MALLORY Who would have thought that Pierre Trudeau would be the :prime Minister who would try to unmake a century of our history and take us back to the view of the nature of the Canadian state which was most persistently articulated by Sir John A. Macdonald? For Macdonald believed that the strength of the Canadian union flowed from the representativeness of the institutions of the central government, rather than from a federal division of powers. One of his most characteristic expressions of this view was made in the House of Commons in 1868, when he said that "It was true that the theory of the constitution made no such requirement [for a cabinet constructed on representative lines], nor prohibited the selection altogether from any one particular district, but...it was thought advisable that the confidence of every section of the Confederation should be invited and secured by the recognition of its right to Cabinet representation.''1 Combined with his belief that the system was held together by a coalition of sectional representatives at the centre, was a continuing exasperation, amounting sometimes to contempt, for provincial politicians whom Macdonald regarded generally as a divisive and parochial breed.2 Do these sentiments somehow sound familiar ? Do they sound like our present Prime Minister , with his continued emphasis that all Canadians must feel at home with their government because their own representatives are fully a part of it, and his hard-line defence of a federal presence in all aspects of Canadian life? What has come over the man? Sixteen years ago he lectured his social democratic friends about the importance of preserving "a scrupulous respect for the postulates of federalism ...[which] will lend greater force to the efforts of those Quebeckers who are trying to turn their province into an open society. And perhaps more important still, it will create a climate where the debate between autonomy and 18 centralization can be solved through rational rather than emotional discussion. "3 It could be argued - although with some reservations - that the present government of Quebec represents the culmination to date of the efforts of a new breed of Quebec politicians to turn their province into a more open, liberal, and democratic society. And yet, as we know, the debate on both sides has reached an emotional pitch which makes the time of Maurice Duplessis seem by contrast a golden age of civil discourse. Of course, the fault is on both sides. Pierre Trudeau has never concealed his strong feeling, based on his intellectual affinity with the Age of Reason, that nationalism is a sort of tribalism writ large, while Rene Levesque cannot be unaware that the chief motor force of his party and movement is an exclusive and secular nationalism which he may find difficult in the end to control in the interests of his strongly asserted belief in an open and democratic society. Thus it is now felt by many, with a sinking despair, that the terms of the argument are being too narrowly set by the main contestants and that the real issues are being pushed out of focus. What is at stake is the viability of Canada as a federal state and an example to a world in which almost all regimes seem increasingly fragile and in which faith in the possibility of a system of government based on genuine civility and respect . for differences is increasingly hard to sustain. What is the nature of the Canadian state? Clearly it is a particular kind of plural society built around institutions which protect the integrity of its various parts through a rather complex kind of federalism. This federalism has two basic elements. The first is the obvious part, with a division of powers between levels of government which permits provincial governments a necessary role in all matters which are not of common concern because the needs and aspirations of people in different provinces are different. The second is the operation of the principle of sectional representation in all of the major institutions of the national government.4 Both are important. During the first century of Canadian history, the country has evolved from a highly...