Conrad Black: Alberta referendum should spur Canada to do better

The Alberta referendum results across all 10 questions came out as well as Canadian federalists could have hoped. Seventy-five per cent voted against Albertan independence, a convincing result and probably as large a percentage as a similar question would achieve in a referendum in Texas. If Albertans had voted ambiguously on this vital issue, it is conceivable that the U.S. administration might have invited Canada to hold a referendum on whether it would accept a U.S. dollar for every Canadian dollar in a federal union in which Canada would retain control of gun laws and Americans arriving in Canada would not be eligible for Canadian social benefits for five years (so the 20-million most desperate welfare cases in the United States wouldn’t arrive here in the first month of a federal union). It is conceivable that if Alberta had voted 30 or even 40 per cent separatist, it would have accepted such a proposition, and Canada would have cracked open like a ripe pomegranate.

If the separatist vote had been substantially smaller than 25 per cent it would have taken the rod off the back of Prime Minister Mark Carney to maintain the grace of his conversion to the virtues of pipelines and energy exports, which are the greatest and most obvious methods for quickly raising Canadian economic growth and per capita income. If he can bury the putrid corpse of hysterical over-reaction to climate change, which sullied his performance at the Bank of England, he could have the key to raising Canadian prosperity back up to a point closely approximating that of the United States, where it was for many decades prior to the Justin Trudeau debacle.

A number of American commentators, ignorant of Canadian politics, were watching the referendum with dreams of annexationist sugar plums dancing in their heads. All Canadians can take pleasure in disappointing them. This is a double win on the heels of Quebec voters’ confirmation that at least 60 percent of Quebecers do not now want to consider independence further.

Competent management of these issues in Ottawa will keep the bugbear of national disintegration at bay indefinitely. Nor should there be any serious threat to the position of Alberta Premier Danielle Smith. The separatists’ idea that her federalist credentials disqualify her from continuing as premier is an outrage. She was right to let it be known that her preference was federalism, but if a majority of Albertans wished otherwise she recognized their right to an alternative view. The claim that she must go as leader of the United Conservative Party after she conducted a fair referendum in which her preferred option was endorsed by 75 per cent of voters is absurd. Alberta separatists can learn from their kindred spirits in Quebec that setting up shop seeking provincial independence is a recipe for a lifetime in opposition. (René Lévesque set up the Parti Québécois nearly 60 years ago.)

This is an opportunity for Canada. U.S. President Donald Trump raised again recently his rather tedious refrain about Canada being the 51st state, and being unable to function otherwise should be used by Prime Minister Carney as a stimulus for completing reforms to Confederation and not just as the cue for a reprise of his Churchillian shtick opposite the great orange beastly ogre on the other side of Lake America. Canadians should understand that Trump does not dislike Canada and is not threatening to invade or attack it. But he has concluded  that an independent Canada won’t succeed, despite the best efforts of many, this writer included, to convince him that most Canadians don’t wish to be Americans and don’t have unlimited admiration for the violence, corruption, extreme disparities of wealth, contentiousness and vulgarity of American life, though almost all Canadians would acknowledge there’s much to admire about the United States. The strength, success and influence of that country and its contribution to the advancement of democracy, human rights and the free market are beyond question.

Carney should seize this moment to propose a new program to complete Canada’s emergence as one of the world’s most important countries. We should secure Quebec’s adherence to the Constitution with slight further decentralization fairly close to Brian Mulroney’s Meech Lake proposals. We should add to Jean Chrétien’s Clarity Act that in the event of a province voting to secede on a clear question and by a substantial majority, counties of that province voting to remain in Canada that are contiguous to other provinces would secede from the province and continue within Canada. Instead of demanding to abolish the Senate, as Albertans did on Monday, senators should be plausibly described as distinguished Canadians in a recognized field, who would be almost drafted as a matter of duty for renewable five-year terms. In this way, we will have an extremely distinguished and participatory upper house.

In economic and administrative terms, we must gradually reduce the number of government employees by 25 per cent — fewer, better paid jobs, a reduced public sector and more prosperous private sector. We must move in public-private sector co-operation to the swiftest possible capitalization of our natural resources and their export. And to end net capital outflows, we must reduce personal and corporate tax levels to below American rates, and salvage as much access as we can to the American market.

When U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave America’s military guarantee of Canada’s national integrity in Kingston, Ont., in 1938, Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King reciprocated that Canada would do all it could to prevent any extra-hemispheric aggressor reaching the United States via Canada. We have not honoured that obligation and in building up our own defences, we should pursue a military deterrent capacity that ultimately will be effective with or without American collaboration. While he certainly did not envision this, President Trump has given us an opportunity to complete the long progress from a string of settlements along the American border that did not happen to be American, through our times as a dominion and then as a middle power to the ranks of the premier 10 or 12 states in a world of 195 countries. Let us seize this opportunity.

National Post