Quebec’s Final Victory

When Canada’s first ministers sat down last fall to “fix health care for a generation,” the entire country was invited to watch live on television. Under the glare of lights, provincial premiers demanded more money and less federal interference in an area of provincial jurisdiction. Charging Ottawa with mismanaging the file, and precipitating the health-care funding crisis, the premiers exhibited noteworthy confidence. Paul Martin, the master slayer of deficits, and, as finance minister in the 1990s, the man chiefly responsible for cuts to health and social transfer payments, was now in the prime minister’s chair. Having told Canadians that a long-term health-care deal would come out of the conference, Martin winced as the demands piled up. Two days in, despite an offer of substantial and sustained federal funding on the table, the conference was deadlocked. It appeared that more money was not quite enough.

Just prior to what was supposed to be a celebratory dinner at the prime minister’s 24 Sussex Drive residence, Quebec Premier Jean Charest told Martin that multilateral discussions were futile, and demanded instead bilateral negotiations between his province and Ottawa. The cameras were shut off, and Martin instructed Alex Himmelfarb, one of his senior advisers, to broker a deal. A full day later, closeted federal and Quebec officials failed to reach common ground. Pushing functionaries aside, Martin finally intervened, and, in the end, accepted Charest’s original demand of federal funding with no real strings attached. The trade-off, in order to pacify Alberta and to ensure agreement from the other premiers, was that, vis-à-vis the ten-year $41 billion health-care package, the same deal must, in essence, be available to all provinces. Without hesitating, Charest agreed.

Martin trumpeted the agreement, calling it “a deal that really embraces the reality of Canada and I am very, very proud of it.” He further described it as “a deal for a decade” and declared “asymmetrical federalism” henceforth the order of the day. It was a sound bite accepted by many journalists and by Liberal Party stalwarts determined to stand by their leader in a minority government. But with a Liberal Party leadership review slated for this March, rumblings of discontent can now be heard. The hushed question has become “Did Martin sell the farm?”

Quebec, long in the constitutional wilderness and refusing to participate in most federal-provincial agreements, is now the lead advocate of “interprovincialism,” and the cleavage dividing the nation no longer falls along the English-French axis, but rather is the provinces versus Ottawa. While there is language in the new health-care accord allowing the federal government to claim victory—the provinces are instructed to abide by the dictates of the Canada Health Act and report on universality, etc.—only time will tell the story of regional compliance. Meanwhile, a principle has been endorsed that sets up the possibility of “sovereignty- association” not just for Quebec, but for all ten provinces.

Charest returned home maintaining that the agreement was the beginning of a new series of initiatives to rectify the fiscal imbalance and lessen the temptation to centralize. He received a hero’s welcome. Paul Martin may be “very proud of it,” but many Liberals believe that when a Quebec premier (of whatever political stripe) is in the ascendancy, there is trouble afoot. On Parliament Hill, one can hear the whispers: “Pierre Elliott Trudeau, it would have never happened under Pierre Elliott Trudeau,” and disquiet about the “reality of Canada” as Mr. Martin sees it. To many, it represents national vivisection.

Watching the September 2004 events unfold filled me with disbelief and, yes, memories tinged with nostalgia. In the early 1980s, with the economy in a tailspin, an energy crisis threatening both treasuries and lifestyles, and the country politically divided over social issues, somehow the most critical matter of the day was to bring Canada’s constitution home from Britain, and to knit Canadians together as one nation, with all its citizens subject to the same rights and responsibilities. It was Prime Minister Trudeau’s vision and the constitutional conference of 1981 was convened to hammer it through.

My generation knows the scene well. We watched on television as Trudeau attempted to impose his iron will, insisting that Canada must be more than the sum of its parts. We watched, as the conference tilted toward a stalemate between Trudeau’s charter-based nationalism and emphasis on individual rights, and the “two nations” vision of Canada embraced by most Quebecers. Then, we learned, sequestered away from the main gathering, three old friends—Ontario’s Roy McMurtry, Saskatchewan’s Roy Romanow, and Ottawa’s man Jean Chrétien—huddled around a kitchen table in the Ottawa Conference Centre to negotiate a deal. It is no wonder that the “kitchen chat” included a representative from deal-making Ontario, a Prairie New Democrat with centralist leanings, and Chrétien, a man who supported Trudeau’s drive to keep “Quebec in its place—Quebec’s place is in Canada.”

The next day, the deal was signed. “Behind his Oriental impassivity, one could feel Trudeau literally rejoicing,” said René Lévesque shortly thereafter. “He had put one over on us.” To Lévesque, the accord signed by Trudeau and the nine English premiers was uniquely Canadian, orchestrated “behind Quebec’s back to insure Quebec’s servility to the anglophone majority in Canada.” The memory of Quebec’s “humiliation,” which became known as “the night of the long knives,” has shaped federal-provincial relations ever since.

From 1984 to 1993, as the chief pollster for the Mulroney government, I was in charge of taking the nation’s temperature on constitutional matters. Twice, through the Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords, Canadians said “No” to special status for Quebec, and I very much doubt that this sentiment has changed since. In 1992, on a sweltering late summer’s day, I looked down the barrel of certain defeat of the Charlottetown Accord and tried to explain to then-constitutional minister Joe Clark the dilemma he faced. Sitting in the prime minister’s office in the Langevin Block, I told him, “Right now, the onlyl package a majority of Canadians are prepared to accept would involve giving the ‘Rest of Canada’ those things that Quebec is asking for.” Clark’s view was that such an arrangement would emaciate the federal government, leaving it without the capacity to set national standards.