Prime Minister Stephen Harper, with a majority government and just five seats in Quebec, has seemed much more a provincial rights advocate than previous Prime Ministers. And, it bears mentioning, how most of Harper's predecessors were often held hostage by the demands of Quebec and the ever-simmering national unity file.
The more fatigue that Canadians have come to feel about Quebec, the more it seems that a national unity crisis happens only when a federal government permits itself to behave like there is a crisis by knuckling under to Quebec's demands.
Harper may become the first Prime Minister in three generations to express what most Canadians feel when Quebec nationalists play the separation card after making incessant and often unreasonable demands.
Quebec's threat to leave is only effective if it can be measured against two benchmarks: First, that Quebec could actually afford to leave Canada when given the opportunity and second, that the rest of us would be harmed by Quebec doing so.
It is better for Harper, early on in Marois's tenuous minority government, to be constructive and firm: No special deals for Quebec that are unacceptable to all other provinces; and the sooner that the bluff gets called on the powerless Quebec separatists the better.
. . .
Saskatchewan's once natural governing party, the NDP, is planning its second leadership convention in just four years and the barely concealed ambitions of its principal leadership candidates have been as obvious as they've been unrestrained.
As Saskatoon NDP MLA Cam Broten announces his candidacy, it culminates months of planning, organizing and demurring, but not too strenuously, his intentions to run. And to this point, Broten has been the least visible of the field of four.
All summer, Ryan Meili, the community clinic street worker physician and social activist who ran second to ex-leader Dwain Lingenfelter has been actively promoting his book, a thin quick read that is an autobiographical depiction of politics as public health.
With every social media reference extolling Meili or his book - helpfully re-posted by Meili himself, the countdown clock has been ticking to his campaign announcement.
Also on the far left of the party, union economist Erin Weir has been busily writing op-ed pieces on various political issues. Weir's chutzpah factor has exceeded all others as he's trotted out a "Draft Weir" social media presence complete with endorsements and "atta-boys" from various left-wing academics and union supporters urging him to run.
While neither Meili nor Weir has ever been elected to public office, both are well organized and playing to the NDP's political left wing.
Aside from Broten, one of the other candidates inside the NDP caucus, Regina's Trent Wotherspoon has spent the summer playing a bigger tent, centrist type of politics and looking for all the world like a politician on the make.
He has travelled to community events across the province, breezily tweeting and posting accounts of all the nice people he's met, all the neat places he's been to and how he's so happy to be there.
Although the leadership convention is not until March, the prelude to this race has felt different.
In the past, NDP leadership campaigns were often like wrestling bouts in WWE - lots of hype and some fancy moves but the unsettling impression that the outcome had been preordained.
From NDP stalwart Allan Blakeney's triumph in 1970 to the long 17-year wait imposed on his runnerup and lieutenant Roy Romanow to NDP foot soldier and political insider Lorne Calvert in 2000, there was always a sense that the party establishment chose people of pedigree, political longevity, experience and credibility to hold down the top job.
Even the party's disastrous 2009 choice of the hapless Dwain Lingenfelter, a one-time NDP heavyweight, seemed to be the party insiders putting their imprimatur on the presumptive best choice.
Now, there appears to be none of this - four men under 40, all relatively inexperienced in public life, two never elected and two with five years' experience as MLAs in opposition.
Either something has fundamentally shifted inside the one time political powerhouse NDP or the party is still struggling to find its way to relevance in a Saskatchewan that hardly resembles the place this party governed for most of the last 70 years.
We will come closer to an answer during the next six months.
Original Article
Source: the star phoenix
Author: John Gormley
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