FREDERICTON—Exactly 20 years ago this week, the Canadian Constitution became officially toxic — politically, at least.
The Charlottetown accord, a complex array of updates to the law of the land, including a brand-new Senate and deals to accommodate Quebec and aboriginal people, died on Oct. 26, 1992, in a national referendum.
It was rejected mainly in a torrent of voter antipathy toward politicians of all stripes, who had painstakingly cobbled together the accord over many months and many hard-bargaining sessions.
And from that night forward, Canadian politicians have resolved to never again dabble in constitutional matters.
It’s the cheapest form of consensus we have in this country, right alongside our purported unanimity about taxes. “No one wants to reopen old constitutional battles,” our politicians assure us, in the same breath as “No one is in favour of tax increases.”
When those phrases appear in political speeches, they are synonyms for “Insert applause line here.”
Twenty years ago, one of the leading voices against the Charlottetown accord was a 33-year-old political strategist named Stephen Harper, who was working with an upstart political movement from the west called the Reform Party. The Charlottetown referendum battle helped vault Harper and his party into national prominence.
Repeatedly, this Harper fellow framed the Charlottetown battle as the ordinary people of Canada against the “elites,” with their highfalutin talk about the Constitution.
“The local and national elites that have been carrying the Yes message, their social circles may be important, but they’re not very wide,” Harper said in one newspaper interview in the midst of the 1992 referendum.
“A lot of what the Yes (team) does implies a very anti-democratic, elitist attitude toward the electorate. . . Just about every message they put out says you either can’t vote No or you are stupid to vote No.”
We may well wonder how Harper, the prime minister, is feeling about the general intelligence of the electorate now that he’s in charge of it, 20 years later.
This week, I was at a conference to mark the 20th anniversary of the demise of the Charlottetown accord, featuring some of the leading characters of its creation — former prime minister Joe Clark (constitutional affairs minister in 1992) and interim Liberal leader Bob Rae (who was the premier of Ontario and a leading negotiator). It was a quiet, low-key gathering, in keeping with the prevailing antipathy toward marking any constitutional anniversary in this country.
Harper’s government is spending a lot of time and money whooping it up over the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, for instance. But the 30th anniversary of the Constitution’s patriation and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms slipped quietly by earlier this year with little notice.
Still, it’s worth sitting back, 20 years after the Charlottetown accord’s demise, to consider what exactly went down in flames the night of Oct. 26, 1992.
Beyond the individual bits and pieces of the accord, including an equal and elected Senate, it seems that Canadians lost something larger. Simply put: politicians and citizens lost their faith in each other and, in particular, their optimism about each other’s motives.
Once upon a time, the Constitution was our way of talking through the vast differences in the country — a quest to find what ideas or principles held Canada together. Grievances were aired, bottom lines were declared, but ultimately we trusted that all issues could be sorted out through a frank, political conversation between the politicians and the citizens they represented.
Ever since Charlottetown, politicians have been rewarded for the ways in which they avoided those conversations. Jean Chrétien rode to power in 1993 promising not to bother Canadians with any big constitutional discussions, and his successors have faithfully adhered to that governing tenet. Harper has taken that advice even farther by avoiding first ministers conferences all together.
Now, when our governments are looking for themes to unite us, they head to the political-marketing departments, which come up with snappy slogans and images. Apparently, according to the current federal marketers, Canada is united by its love of the military, the monarchy, hockey and doughnuts.
These prolonged ad campaigns, in effect, have replaced our constitutional discussions. We have placed our trust in advertising experts — instead of our politicians — to build bridges between us.
It would be interesting to go back in time and ask the 1992 version of Stephen Harper what he made of this development: a government, indeed, an entire political class, seeing the citizens as marketing targets.
It’s hard to imagine that as anything but “elitist” — an approach organized around the idea that citizens aren’t smart enough to understand or care about the Constitution.
That’s the unfortunate legacy of Charlottetown’s demise. Two full decades later, politicians and citizens haven’t improved their views of each other; they still see each other as “too dumb” to deal with hard discussions. But now they just avoid talking to each other at all.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Susan Delacourt
The Charlottetown accord, a complex array of updates to the law of the land, including a brand-new Senate and deals to accommodate Quebec and aboriginal people, died on Oct. 26, 1992, in a national referendum.
It was rejected mainly in a torrent of voter antipathy toward politicians of all stripes, who had painstakingly cobbled together the accord over many months and many hard-bargaining sessions.
And from that night forward, Canadian politicians have resolved to never again dabble in constitutional matters.
It’s the cheapest form of consensus we have in this country, right alongside our purported unanimity about taxes. “No one wants to reopen old constitutional battles,” our politicians assure us, in the same breath as “No one is in favour of tax increases.”
When those phrases appear in political speeches, they are synonyms for “Insert applause line here.”
Twenty years ago, one of the leading voices against the Charlottetown accord was a 33-year-old political strategist named Stephen Harper, who was working with an upstart political movement from the west called the Reform Party. The Charlottetown referendum battle helped vault Harper and his party into national prominence.
Repeatedly, this Harper fellow framed the Charlottetown battle as the ordinary people of Canada against the “elites,” with their highfalutin talk about the Constitution.
“The local and national elites that have been carrying the Yes message, their social circles may be important, but they’re not very wide,” Harper said in one newspaper interview in the midst of the 1992 referendum.
“A lot of what the Yes (team) does implies a very anti-democratic, elitist attitude toward the electorate. . . Just about every message they put out says you either can’t vote No or you are stupid to vote No.”
We may well wonder how Harper, the prime minister, is feeling about the general intelligence of the electorate now that he’s in charge of it, 20 years later.
This week, I was at a conference to mark the 20th anniversary of the demise of the Charlottetown accord, featuring some of the leading characters of its creation — former prime minister Joe Clark (constitutional affairs minister in 1992) and interim Liberal leader Bob Rae (who was the premier of Ontario and a leading negotiator). It was a quiet, low-key gathering, in keeping with the prevailing antipathy toward marking any constitutional anniversary in this country.
Harper’s government is spending a lot of time and money whooping it up over the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, for instance. But the 30th anniversary of the Constitution’s patriation and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms slipped quietly by earlier this year with little notice.
Still, it’s worth sitting back, 20 years after the Charlottetown accord’s demise, to consider what exactly went down in flames the night of Oct. 26, 1992.
Beyond the individual bits and pieces of the accord, including an equal and elected Senate, it seems that Canadians lost something larger. Simply put: politicians and citizens lost their faith in each other and, in particular, their optimism about each other’s motives.
Once upon a time, the Constitution was our way of talking through the vast differences in the country — a quest to find what ideas or principles held Canada together. Grievances were aired, bottom lines were declared, but ultimately we trusted that all issues could be sorted out through a frank, political conversation between the politicians and the citizens they represented.
Ever since Charlottetown, politicians have been rewarded for the ways in which they avoided those conversations. Jean Chrétien rode to power in 1993 promising not to bother Canadians with any big constitutional discussions, and his successors have faithfully adhered to that governing tenet. Harper has taken that advice even farther by avoiding first ministers conferences all together.
Now, when our governments are looking for themes to unite us, they head to the political-marketing departments, which come up with snappy slogans and images. Apparently, according to the current federal marketers, Canada is united by its love of the military, the monarchy, hockey and doughnuts.
These prolonged ad campaigns, in effect, have replaced our constitutional discussions. We have placed our trust in advertising experts — instead of our politicians — to build bridges between us.
It would be interesting to go back in time and ask the 1992 version of Stephen Harper what he made of this development: a government, indeed, an entire political class, seeing the citizens as marketing targets.
It’s hard to imagine that as anything but “elitist” — an approach organized around the idea that citizens aren’t smart enough to understand or care about the Constitution.
That’s the unfortunate legacy of Charlottetown’s demise. Two full decades later, politicians and citizens haven’t improved their views of each other; they still see each other as “too dumb” to deal with hard discussions. But now they just avoid talking to each other at all.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Susan Delacourt
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