The Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the federal carbon tax doesn’t rewrite the Constitution, as dissenting judges argued, so much as it reaffirms how Canada has always worked: Ottawa will interfere with natural resources as it pleases, even if it is damaging to the West. That Ontario was one of the losing plaintiffs matters little. Institutions that make up this country are faulty to their core, biased in their makeup towards the Central provinces. It’s a wonder that Canada works at all.
When Alberta Premier Jason Kenney raises grievances against Ottawa, his critics dismiss him as trying to gin up his base, or to deflect from his own failings. Its only because of Kenney’s dipping poll numbers, the argument goes, that he complained that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau allowed the United States to cancel the Keystone XL pipeline without much fuss, but is pushing back against threats to Line 5, which is critical to Ontario and Quebec. Others argue that if only Albertans didn’t vote for Conservatives all the time, the province would get treated more fairly. If only that were true.
From the time of the National Policy — which protected Ontario industry with tariffs, to the detriment of export-oriented Western farmers who paid inflated prices for equipment — it has been painfully apparent that some regions are mere afterthoughts. When Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan became provinces, they were initially denied control over their resources. Then there was the National Energy Program that aimed to keep oil prices artificially low and remains the best example of Ottawa favouring Central Canada at the expense of other regions.
It isn’t that politicians in Ottawa are necessarily out to get the West, but that Canada’s constitutional structure over incentivizes policies geared towards the Central provinces.
http://nationalpost.com/opinion/car...-and-any-province-that-isnt-ontario-or-quebec
As the political scientist Donald Savoie argues in his book, “Democracy in Canada,” this country’s “
national political institutions were designed for another country.” The United Kingdom has its own regional divisions but it is a fraction of the size of Canada, and in 1867, the UK remained the perfect example of a “unitary state,” meaning there was no competing level of government with powers comparable to the national government, the way there is in a federation.
Political power in Canada can't be gained without winning a single seat outside Ontario and Quebec. Together, the two provinces account for 57 per cent of the 338 seats in the House of Commons. Ontario alone accounts for 36 per cent, while Alberta counts for just 10 per cent. Albertans suddenly voting Liberal won’t change this equation or how its interests are viewed by Ottawa.
Intensifying the House of Commons’ focus on “
national” issues, to the detriment of regional matters, is its level of partisanship, which is almost unique to Canada. When members of Parliament are expected to always vote along party lines or face the prospect of being demoted or even expelled from caucus, there is little room for regional deviation.
The House’s distribution of seats by population is not problematic on its own, but there are no institutions that can effectively balance provincial interests against national ones. That was theoretically the role of the Senate, but it lacks democratic legitimacy and the seat distribution is still weighted heavily towards Ontario and Quebec, with 24 seats each. No other province has more than 10 seats.
In the U.S. Senate, each state is represented equally with two seats, and the Electoral College gives states influence in choosing the president. On this side of the border, there is no national institution that can give a voice to regional concerns, “
unless they are anchored in vote-rich Ontario and Quebec,” Savoie argues. “
Canada does not have the same kind of safeguard for smaller regions as other federations.”
Despite 150-plus years of history, Canada’s core institutions remain extremely stable — “immunized against structural change,” as Savoie puts it. The “deux nation treaty struck in 1867 has not allowed it.”
These tensions are not limited to disputes over the regulation and taxation of resources. Quebec companies win contracts for building ships or maintaining fighter jets despite more competitive options in New Brunswick, British Columbia or Manitoba, provinces that just do not have the electoral clout to assert themselves. Problems facing Ontario’s auto industry and Quebec-based Bombardier are always treated as a grave national concern, despite the fact that for all other provinces, they might be considered regional issues.
Nor are tensions limited to one political party. Former Alberta NDP premier Rachel Notley was highly critical of
the Liberals’ Bill C-69, which created a host of new regulations that makes the building of new pipelines near-impossible. “
This is not how you build a country,” she said two years ago.
Whatever the merits or lack thereof of the Liberal carbon tax are beside the point.
Climate change policy developed in Ottawa by those indifferent to the needs of the West would not create such cleavages in the country, or indeed be so squarely targeted on a single region, if Canada itself was built for more than two provinces.
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