At the end of last week's column, I wrote that if Canada fell apart, we could finally re-confederate into something better. Of course that begs the ultimate question, what is the alternative? Actually, Canada has dozens of possible constitutional reconfigurations due to its cultural, historical, and political make-up.
And while there isn't space here to articulate an entire new Charter or BNA Act, I'd like to offer some observations and tools that could get us there.
First, we must understand just how badly broken our current system is: in the last few years, we have seen everything from senate reform to vital infrastructure to transporting beer in our own borders be effectively blocked by courts, provinces or protesters; that means there is a lack of consensus regarding how Canada is supposed to work from the anarchist underground to the high ivory towers of legal theory. You may call that whatever you want - just not a country.
Second, the idea that Canada is "the first post-national state" is wrong. This does not in fact conform to even the very Liberal Party notion of the "mosaic," let alone the "nation to nation" status that many aboriginal groups demand. Rather, Canada is a latently pre-modern polity, due to it being "founded by many nations forming one state" for logistical and anti-American reasons more than any other purpose. Thus, it is still steeped in deep geographical and local affinities.
Third, it won't do to dissolve Canada into what could be ten or a thousand sovereign communities, waylaying each others' citizens or goods and services, demanding tolls every few kilometers when crossing yet another border.
Not only is that a recipe for violence, but it fails to pay any due respect to the ultimate sacrifices many made for us; whatever Canada is or was, a land worth dying for in every major conflict for a century cannot be so easily tossed away.
What we have isn't working, but we love it too much to let it go: is there a way forward?
Perhaps. But even if the trust of citizens and the integrity of politicians could be gained, a drastic course correction would be needed to save any semblance of what we call "Canada."
To be clear, it would include: returning constitutional supremacy to Parliament, annulling our current Charter, and reintroducing a new bill of rights, all while suspending the activities of the Supreme Court, sending cases to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council until our court's role could be properly defined.
A confederation conference would be necessary, where the first order of business would be the redrafting of sections 91 and 92 of the BNA Act; simultaneously, it would be necessary to advocate for both more political equality at the federal level through the senate while also trying to redraw provincial lines. My own recommendation would be to consult diocesan boundaries which follow many natural affiliations by separating both metropolitan and rural into 54 areas.
Hopefully, all of this would result in what amounted to a loosely confederated polity, with hard and fast rules on trade while leaving local issues to the people who live there.
It would be absolutely necessary to create "free cities" with less federal power but more internal freedom, just as it would be necessary to let all municipalities and provinces collect income and sales taxes.
In the best of worlds, there might even be local police and militias in every district.
Ultimately, the principle of subsidiarity would be golden rule for every political action, a concept I've advocated in nearly all of my columns. And while many might call that a utopian sentiment, I would simply remind them where setting the bar too low has gotten us: here.
Canada is too good of a place to be left in its current state of political paralysis.
And, as always, when what we have finally stops working for enough people, there will be a mass turn towards any system that offers solutions. I hope we can learn our lessons before it's too late.
