Remember Meech Lake?
Let’s get on with the constitutional crisis so we (the people) can build a new constitution that serves citizens rather than politicians
May 22, 2025
So a bunch of Alberta right-wingers want to have a referendum to make Alberta a sovereign country. The core group likely wants it to become part of the USA but that’s clearly a non-starter so they’ll start with suggesting a sovereign country and if it runs into trouble they will beg the US to take them over. Maybe. They like Trump, but politics goes in cycles and Trumpism is very unlikely to survive beyond his current 4-year term. Then what would they want?
This is a new-old scenario as we’ve been through this a couple of times with Quebec. The last time was in the late 80s and early 90’s when Mulroney was still Prime Minister. He beat them in their sovereignty referendum but that didn’t solve anything. In an effort to smooth over the general malaise at the time he appointed Keith Spicer to conduct an inquiry into Canada’s future. Spicer travelled all across Canada, held many hearings and invited written submissions. It resulted in a lengthy report summarizing hundreds of submissions but like most government reports, it was buried and accomplished nothing. The problem, as Pierre Trudeau (Justin’s father for those that weren’t around then) would have pointed out, is that the Canadian constitution is disastrously out-of-date – and he was a professor of constitutional law. Canada’s constitution was the British North America Act – an act of the British Parliament which created Canada in 1867. If we wanted to make any changes we had to petition the British government to make them (which we did a few times). Trudeau Sr. considered it his mission to bring our constitution home and in 1982 he did just that and even got the Queen to come to Canada and sign the proclamation in person.
However the fly in the ointment was that Quebec did not agree to all the terms and has blocked all efforts since to amend it, so our constitution has been frozen ever since and it gets further out-of-date every year.
And that’s where Alberta comes in. The division of powers set out in our ‘constitution’ says that things like health care and the environment are provincial responsibilities.
The British North America Act (BNA) was written in 1867 when health care was doctor who made house calls on horseback, his nurse was likely his wife, his hospital (in a pinch) was an upstairs room in his house and his pharmacy was what he could carry in his little black bag, and BTW, a medical degree could be obtained in as little as 2 years. Somewhat removed from today’s health care system.
The environment – well that really wasn’t a consideration back them. Canada was a land of trees and rivers and lakes with a scatter of ‘cities’. The very first oil wells had been discovered only a few years earlier. There were no pesticides, and no air or water pollution.
But we aren’t living in 1867 any more. The environment is in crisis and subject to international agreements and the federal government has to go begging to the provinces to try to get them to agree to world-wide standards.
The bureaucrats who drafted the BNA Act had no conception of what was to come and they wrote the Act for the situation in place in 1867.
Mulroney tried valiantly to get Quebec to agree to the constitution by tweaking a number of clauses and that’s what Meech Lake was all about – but it fell apart.
Th problem from my perspective was largely process. Constitutions belong to the people not the politicians – even tin-hat dictators know this. They set up hand-picked ‘citizen’ committees to draft it and then hold a sham referendum to approve it. Canada didn’t even do that – it was all done behind closed doors by politicians – Canadians were left out.
Mulroney didn’t give up and had another go with the Charlottetown Accords (still largely behind closed doors) and the result of those negotiations was put to a referendum but by then we were so pissed off that it was soundly defeated.
And so we are stuck with a document set up for a pre-industrial country.
So getting back the the separatists in Alberta, I suspect their time would be better spent advocating for an open citizen-centred constitutional process.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a lateral thinker – problems that others find intractable get my grey matter pulsing. So I made a submission to the Spicer commission in which I laid out some ideas that might get the process started. I am going to put that into my next article (too long to add to this one) but if you’re curious I’ve up-loaded my submission to my website and you can read it there – all 9 pages of it.
A lot of my Spicer submission deals with process. A key element is that a new constitution has to be drafted by the citizens not by governments. Provincial Premiers have put too much time and effort getting where they are and any process that leaves them on the sidelines is a threat that they will oppose. To them the current division of powers are bargaining chips “if you take away health, what do I get in return?” We the citizens are paying for it, so let us decide.
The federal government needs to appoint a respected individual who can consult widely and develop the framework and define some common ground on what a new constitution should include (or exclude) and what the ‘design’ committee should look like and how its members should be chosen.
Something that might be included is provincial borders. These were established more than 100 years ago by bureaucrats sitting in stuffy offices who didn’t know the difference between a buffalo wallow and a snow bank and the borders they established were pretty arbitrary. That’s why so much happens in Ontario, and why the West wants more of it. Realistically Ontario should be broken up. There is no commonality between Toronto and Northern Ontario.
And BTW I’m a firm believer in democracy and that includes self determination. If someone wants to have a referendum, go for it, but don’t play games, don’t do it as a bargaining ploy. Don’t do it for short term political considerations. Secession is for keeps. Be honest about what’s at stake and if you win then be prepared to carry it through and stand on your own.
A corollary of that is that if Quebec or Alberta is given the right to secede from Canada then it only makes sense that Montreal (or Calgary) must be given the same right to secede from Quebec (or Alberta) and stay in Canada. And all the native reservation areas have the right to remain also if they so choose. Secessionists can’t have their cake and eat it too.
