Would we be able to pull off such a feat today?
Ontario’s former attorney-general, Roy McMurtry, was asked that very question during a special last week on CBC Radio’s The Current.
“It wouldn’t happen today,” McMurtry said flatly.
In McMurtry’s view, the current political climate in Canada — hyper-partisan and highly polarized — wouldn’t permit the kind of co-operation we saw between politicians of different parties 30 years ago.
As well, since the failed constitutional adventures of the 1980s and early 1990s, we have had a series of prime ministers who have pronounced themselves allergic to grand discussions of what defines us as a nation.
So politicians of the future probably don’t have to worry about marking any big anniversaries 20 or 30 years down the road. That 1982 constitutional adventure may have been the last big thing our political class was able to deliver to the citizenry.
And the Canadian public would likely say: we’re OK with that.
It’s fascinating to look back on the public-opinion polls from 30 years ago and see evidence of Canadians’ enthusiasm for a grand, national project.
Trudeau had the support of 78 per cent of the public when a 1980 Gallup poll asked citizens how they felt about Canada getting its own constitution. What proposal could get that kind of support today? Abolition of income tax or the GST, perhaps?
(Interestingly, only one of Trudeau’s original six constitutional proposals was in any way controversial in that 1980 poll: the one about keeping the Queen as head of state, which only 47 per cent of Canadians supported at the time. And here we are, 30 years later, rolling out big money this year to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.)
There is a little secret the politicians won’t tell you — we actually are talking about the stuff of constitutions these days.
Quietly, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to reform the Senate, while the House of Commons is in the midst of a redistribution that will add 30 seats to the chamber. We’ve also seen simmering debates over a national securities regulator, as well as the future of health care and the complex equalization program.
The difference between now and then is that these conversations are taking place without first ministers’ conferences, constitutional amendments or big public debates. The only way they’d probably get attention, in fact, is if the participants sported boxing gloves and belted each other about the head.
(Yes, that was a reference to the much-ballyhooed match between Senator Patrick Brazeau and Papineau MP Justin Trudeau last month. I sensed I was losing you readers with that mention of equalization, so I quickly shifted from the preoccupations of one Trudeau generation to the next.)
Harper, for pragmatic as well as ideological reasons, is unlikely to launch any big, pan-Canadian initiatives while he’s in office. And it’s not just because of his aversion to first ministers’ meetings or anything that would enlarge the role or profile of the federal government. No one has been able to do any large or complex amendments to that Constitution since it was signed 30 years ago, after all.
And probably realistically, Harper knows there’s little he could do to win the mass, 78 per cent support for anything that any government would tackle these days.
Let’s not forget: the Conservatives are a market-friendly party, but mass-marketing is not their business. It’s said they don’t even do national polling when they plot their campaign strategy, focusing all their attention on “micro-targeting” the pockets of the support they require. Other parties, notably the New Democrats, are taking up that example too. The days of one-size-fits-all politics are probably over.
And note: while Jean Chrétien was very visible this past week, marking the Charter anniversary, this was an accomplishment during his tenure as justice minister, not prime minister. Chrétien’s main legacy achievement was in balancing Canada’s books, but that exercise was mainly one of reducing the scope and ambition of government. Again, most Canadians would say that’s a good thing.
It is worth a thought, though: what have Canada’s politicians created since the 1980s, worth marking as an anniversary 10, 20 or 30 years from now? We now have governments that celebrate achievements of the past — or not, as was the case with Harper’s faint praise for the Charter anniversary last week.
So if we hadn’t created that Constitution and Charter of Rights 30 years ago, could we pull it off today? McMurtry is probably right: “it wouldn’t happen.”
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Susan Delacourt
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