Thirty years ago this month, nine premiers and the prime minister of the day let a genie out of the bottle.Gathered in Ottawa, the country’s first ministers — minus the premier of Quebec — agreed to repatriate the Constitution and to introduce a Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The decision was a seminal moment in modern Canadian politics. It was also a headlong plunge into the relative unknown.
In hindsight, neither Pierre Trudeau nor the premiers were fully cognizant of the genie they were letting out. It quickly took on a life of its own.
At the time the deal was struck, some premiers were concerned about the impact the Charter would have on the balance of power between Parliament, the government and the judiciary.
They also worried about the fallout from the decision to go ahead without Quebec.
On both scores, it turned out that the architects of the repatriation bid had underestimated the consequences of their actions.
Empowered by the Charter, the courts pushed back the frontier on individual and collective rights in ways that the politicians of 1981 did not think possible or, in many cases, desirable.
Abortion on demand and gay marriage to name just those two were not on their policy radars.
Some premiers naturally wondered whether the decision to dispense from Quebec’s formal support would give a boost to its secessionist aspirations.
But none envisaged that the next three decades would see the gradual instauration of a federalist version of the sovereignty-association concept Trudeau had fought against on behalf of Canada in the 1980 Quebec referendum.
In today’s Parliament, the three main parties have all, to varying degree, espoused asymmetrical federalism as a legitimate formula to deal with Quebec.
That was largely a product of necessity.
Over the past 30 years, moving forward on the federal-provincial front without allowing for the Quebec difference has usually only been possible at the risk of a setback on the unity front.
At least in the practical sense, the shared Liberal and NDP vision of a Canada run by a strong central government no longer fully includes Quebec.
That vision never had many takers in Quebec to start with. Today it has a lot less defenders in the other provinces.
The majority of the 1981 participants were Liberal and Tory politicians. As they celebrated their accord, none of them foresaw that their actions would lead to the unravelling of Canada’s two top national parties.
The repatriation of the Constitution (along with the Charter) was Trudeau’s greatest political triumph. But it was also the beginning of the end of the Liberal hegemony on federal politics.
The road that brought the Liberals to their second-tier place in the House of Commons last May can be traced back to the former Ottawa railway station that was the venue of the historical 1981 First Ministers conference.
In the wake of repatriation, the central Quebec pillar upon which rested Liberal claims to be Canada’s natural governing party crumbled.
The enduring failure to repair the pillar led to rot spreading to much of the federal Liberal foundation.
Brian Mulroney’s Tories were the initial beneficiaries of Quebec’s rejection of the Liberals. But it was a poisoned gift.
Mulroney’s reconciliation efforts tore his Quebec/Alberta coalition apart. After the 1990 failure of the Meech Lake accord, a critical mass of moderate Conservatives from Quebec turned their backs on the Tories.
The dominance of the progressive wing of the party on Canada’s conservative movement was a collateral casualty of that schism. Today the Red Tories are a marginal group within Stephen Harper’s reconstructed party.
More than a punctual reorganization of the partisan forces on Parliament Hill, the three decades that have elapsed since the 1981 conference have featured a deep transformation of the country’s political culture.
That transformation has very much left Canada’s political class with the short end of the governance stick.
Origin
Source: Toronto Star
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