March 2013

In a Spain devastated by an ongoing economic crisis since 2008, Catalonian nationalism seems to have found a new life. A renewed nationalist fervour was evident at the great popular mobilization of the Diada Nacional (Catalonia’s national holiday) on September 11, 2012, which brought more than a million people into the streets of Barcelona marching under independence slogans. Since the democratic transition that followed the death of Franco on November 20, 1975, Catalonian nationalism has taken advantage of the institutional autonomy and the political room of maneuver conferred by the Spanish Constitution of 1978 and the new State of Autonomies (Estado de las autonomias). These have in fact allowed Spain to evolve from the territorial structure of a unitary State governed in the name of the ideology of “National Catholicism”, distinguished by the defence of the Catholic religion and Spanish nationalism, towards a quasi-federal structure where the Senate represents the diversity of Spanish territories and where each region has become an “autonomous community” that can assume a greater or lesser degree of autonomy; in education, health, and law enforcement, for example.

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There are so many Liberal leadership races going on across the country that sometimes we miss a few. I woke up in an arctic Montreal this morning eager to check one of the larger contests off my list. The candidates to succeed Jean Charest as leader of the Quebec Liberal Party — the convention will be in Montreal on March 16-17 — were having a kind of sort of debate.

The venue was the Sheraton Centre hotel, where a group called Idée Fédérale wanted to gauge the candidates’ federalist credentials. Idée Fédérale is designed to be a place where Quebecers can talk about Canada in public, as though it were respectable; its most visible figures are La Presse editor André Pratte and international-relations scholar Jocelyn Coulon, who inaugurated a durable tradition when he became the first in a string of federal Liberals to lose to Tom Mulcair in Outremont in 2007.

This morning’s breakfast was resolutely low-key. Pratte sat in a plush chair and interrogated the three candidates, gently gently, in turn. They did not appear together except for a group photo. Let’s take them in the order they appeared.

I was excited when Philippe Couillard, the urbane former health minister who’s this race’s pretty clear front-runner, penned an op-ed in Le Devoir last month featuring some bracing pro-Canada rhetoric. It wasn’t entirely clear to me that this Captain Canada act would last, especially since Couillard’s article was edited after publication to add a mention of Claude Ryan, the party’s patron saint of constitutional ambivalence. But Couillard did answer Pratte’s questions this morning with a fair dose of unabashed pro-Canada rhetoric. He called federalism “a mode of government that the world envies us” and said “it’s there” — in the hearts of Quebecers, he meant — “the pride of belonging to a great country.”

A little dancing followed promptly. Couillard made haste to add the “Quebec ma patrie, Canada mon pays” line that Michael Ignatieff used to favour, and then got stuck in snow drifts three fight high as he tried to explain his constitutional policy. “This conversation” — about the Quebec legislature’s refusal to endorse the 1982 constitutional amendments — “isn’t over for us.” He did allow that “1982 was an important advance for Canada,” because it permitted a repatriated constitution and a Charter of Rights, which he did not depict as a corresponding setback for Quebec, but he said the events of 1982 constitute “un malentendu,” a misunderstanding between Quebec and the rest of the country. More broadly, he sees events since 1976 — the election of René Lévesque, the first referendum, the repatriation, Meech, Charlottetown — as “an immense cycle of history that hasn’t been closed.” It became easier to understand how Benoît Pelletier, Charest’s first-term intergovernmental-affairs minister and a relative constitutional hawk in the Claude Ryan mode, wound up on the list of Couillard’s supporters.

But neither does Couillard want to lurch immediately into formal constitutional negotiations if he becomes leader and the Liberals manage to take power back from Pauline Marois’s PQ. “Let’s not fall into the trap of an interminable list of demands, of a grocery list,” he said. He even had a kind word for Canada’s constitutional monarchy: “I find it rather romantic.”

Pierre Moreau was completely unknown to me. I see from his bio it’s because, although he was first elected in 2003, the lawyer lost his seat in the 2007 election and didn’t hold a cabinet post until he won it back in 2008 and became chief government whip. In 2011 he became intergovernmental-affairs minister, which is a bit of a Maytag Repairman role since Stephen Harper keeps his own intergovernmental-affairs ministers drugged and gagged in the broom closet. Finally, on his way to forced retirement, Charest made Moreau his transport minister. The guy was clearly on an upward trajectory, but he’s the least known man in the field.

I liked him immediately. He’s a journeyman, not given to rhetorical flights and apparently uninterested in combing his shock of black hair. But he seems strikingly at ease with himself, genuinely funny. He proclaimed himself, as he took his seat, someone who’s “always been federalist.” The contrast was with Raymond Bachand, whom we’ll get to. Moreau is positioning himself in this race as the unabashed federalist. A new round of constitutional talks? “It would take two to negotiate,” he pointed out. Having a list of demands is just trouble, he said: “it just becomes a tool for our adversaries.” “We shouldn’t make ourselves believe we’ll attract francophone votes by playing up nationalism,” he said. “We mustn’t be a copy of the PQ. When you offer people a copy they throw the copy out and keep the original.”

So Ottawa can roll right over this guy. Except not quite: he’s fixated on the Senate, “a fundamental element of balance in Canada,” and if any of Stephen Harper’s reform plans — here, Moreau was making the perhaps reckless assumption that Harper still has any reform plans — reduce Quebec’s weight in central decision-making, “it would be unacceptable.” Moreau said a court challenge should be an option if such a plan takes shape.

Moreau wants Quebec to develop its natural resources to the point where it can stop receiving equalization payments. But if that day ever comes, “we will have to keep in mind the spirit of federalism” and accept that other provinces will still be getting equalization payments.

Pratte asked about François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec. Is it a federalist party? “No, I don’t think the CAQ is federalist. I don’t think M. Legault is federalist. You don’t become federalist overnight.” How long does it take, Pratte wanted to know. “Ask M. Bachand.”

That’s Raymond Bachand, who was Charest’s finance minister before the fall but who started out as a Péquiste alongside René Lévesque and then as chief of staff to Pierre Marc Johnson. Then he left politics to get rich, returning only in 2005 as a surprise addition to the Charest Liberals. Pratte wasted no time: Hey, how do you go from Péquiste to Liberal leadership candidate?

Bachand’s answer had some edge to it. “There may be people who never ask themselves the question” of Quebec’s place in Canada, he said, glaring out at the table where Couillard and Moreau sat, “because they never push back against an injustice.”

Remember what Quebec was like in 1970, he said. He was told to “speak white” (an archaic anglo insult aimed at French speakers) in retail stores. Senior management positions were closed to francophones. “But look at the lightning progress we’ve made since then,” he said. “And it’s the same constitution, fundamentally, now as then.”

I’ve got a long history of mistrusting sovereignist converts to federalism because very often it’s hard to get a credible explanation for either stance out of them. This is the Nycole Turmel/ Jean Lapierre line: I couldn’t tell you why I seemed to be sovereignist. Life’s full of mystery! And as for now, well, folks change, am I right? Bachand manages to sound convincing about his past and his present. He took care to quote John Parisella, Robert Bourassa’s former chief of staff, who is not endorsing a candidate but who said Bachand represents the Liberals’ future because he can get voters who aren’t federalists yet. Bachand’s selling proposition is that he represents higher risk but also higher reward than the other candidates.

He sat with a cushion behind his butt because he’s clearly built to slouch and wanted to make sure that reflex didn’t win. He’s visibly the oldest candidate, rumpled and colloquial. I found myself thinking of Lévesque as I listened to him, as Moreau had reminded me of Charest and Couillard, I’m afraid, made me think of André Boisclair, the young former PQ leader who had a lot of qualities but didn’t inspire the comfort that closes the deal with voters.

Bachand consulted written notes as he argued that natural resource development won’t get Quebec out of equalization. “We’d need $14 billion a year. Alberta gets $12 billion. It’s an illusion.” That was a shot at Moreau. Then a shot at Couillard’s plan to put an end to a vast historical cycle. “Where do you want to put your energy? I don’t want to close a cycle, I want to build a future.”

In La Presse, after a league-sanctioned debate on Sunday, Vincent Marissal called this crop a bunch of weaklings because they don’t have a list of constitutional demands. The winner of this contest will spend the entirety of his tenure being called the same and worse by his adversaries. What these three have to their advantage, Moreau less than the other two, is an easy familiarity with the business of government. It gives them a confidence that you don’t find in the current federal Liberal leadership candidates, most of whom have no experience in the federal government.

I arrived thinking Couillard was the most, indeed probably the only, interesting candidate. I left with a lower opinion of him and a higher opinion of his opponents. And a sense of overriding strangeness: these three are comfortable with a more strongly federalist discourse than any Quebec Liberal leader in decades, yet none knows the rest of Canada well, and the rest of Canada knows them hardly at all.

Link to original article from Macleans.ca

Stéphane Dion and John McCallum

It is often said that national borders are no longer a major economic factor and that, as a result of free trade agreements and market globalization, they do not represent a barrier to trade in goods and services. It is claimed or predicted that national borders do not, or will not, hinder access to major markets.

This borderless economy theory is particularly fashionable in Quebec separatist circles, where two conclusions are drawn from it: first, that the Canadian domestic market is constantly declining in importance for Quebec, and, second, that this market would be just as open even if Quebec seceded from Canada.

This separatist argument is used to strengthen another: that Canada, an east-west construction, is an economic contradiction because the North American economy’s normal flow is north-south and free trade with the United States should consequently release an “irresistible north-south surge” as trade aligns “with the natural tendencies and urgent necessity of geography”.

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Jean-Thomas Bernard

The Canadian equalization program is intended to enable provincial governments to offer services of comparable quality while collecting revenues from their citizens that require approximately the same level of effort. In reality, it is the fiscal capacity (the capacity of the provinces to obtain revenues from certain sources) that is partially equalized; the provinces keep complete freedom regarding expenses.

Fiscal capacity is evaluated by applying the Representative Tax System, which is supposed to reflect the fiscal practices commonly adopted by the provinces. The federal government finances the equalization transfers out of the taxes it collects; consequently all Canadian citizens participate in it, even those from the receiving provinces. The natural resources sector is at the origin of most of the difficulties encountered since the establishment of this program in 1957. The differences in the endowments of the provinces and the instability of natural resource prices are the main causes.

The Canadian economy is in a phase in which the role of natural resources has increased; this will be a source of tension in the application of the equalization program, both between the federal government and the provinces and between the provinces themselves. The creation of sovereign natural resource funds by the provinces would be a mechanism to reduce the impact of raw material price instability while respecting the power of the provinces over natural resources on their territories.

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2014 will be an historic year for the Scots, as they will be called by their government to vote in a referendum on the political status of their community. This referendum, promised by the Scottish National Party (SNP), is surprising considering the electoral system used to elect members of the Scottish Parliament. When the Scottish Parliament was established in 1999, Scotland chose not to adopt the simple plurality system used for British elections, but rather settled on a mixed electoral system that made minority or coalition governments more likely. The first victory of the SNP in 2007, after 8 years of Labour government, was also a minority government. In 2011, however, to the surprise of all, the SNP won a majority of seats, allowing it to form a majority government and relegating the three unionist parties (Labour, Liberal-Democrat and Conservative) to the opposition.

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ANNUAL SURVEY BY
THE FEDERAL IDEA:

QUEBEC AFTER THE
SEPTEMBER 4 ELECTIONS

(Download the survey)

IN A CLIMATE OF GLOBAL ECONOMIC UNCERTAINTY
83% OF QUEBECERS PERCEIVE QUEBEC’S MEMBERSHIP
IN CANADA AS AN ADVANTAGE

Montreal, Wednesday, November 14, 2012 - According to 86% of Quebecers, the result of the September 4 general election in Quebec is due to a desire for a change government, while only 8% believe that voters wanted the elected government to work for sovereignty. A majority of Quebecers also agree that the Quebec Government’s and the federal government’s main priorities should be, in order of importance, the economy, job creation and reducing government spending. Repatriation of powers and the national unity issue are well back in respondents’ choices. Moreover, in the current climate of uncertainty about the global economy, Quebec’s membership in Canada is seen as an advantage by 83% of Quebecers.

These are some of the findings emerging from the fourth annual CROP poll commissioned by the Federal Idea, a Quebec think tank on federalism founded in 2009. The opinion poll was conducted between October 17 and 22 with a WEB panel composed of 1000 respondents. As in previous surveys, the Federal Idea sought to measure Quebecers’ changing perceptions of issues relating to the Canadian federation.

According to the survey, the arrival of a government committed to sovereignty does not prevent 66% of Quebecers from considering the sovereignty debate a thing of the past. 34% of them regard the debate as more relevant than ever.

Other results from this survey are as follows:

• 67% of Quebecers do not believe that Quebec will become a sovereign country some day;
• 56% agree with the position of the Prime Minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, that Quebecers do not want to revisit the constitutional wrangling of the past;
• 79% of all respondents say they are proud to be Canadians, while 74% of Francophone respondents say they are proud to be Canadians.

When asked about a statement by the Prime Minister Pauline Marois to the effect that remaining a province in Canada represents an unacceptable risk for Quebec, 65% of respondents disagreed with this view, while 27% supported it.

The survey also shows that the Quebec government’s stated intention to seek new powers, particularly in the areas of culture and employment insurance, meets with little enthusiasm. In fact, only 43% of respondents express support for repatriation of the employment insurance program, while 45% say they agree that the federal government should cede all its cultural support programs to Quebec. On this point, the results appear consistent with the fact that a majority of survey respondents want their governments to give priority to the economy and not drag them into new constitutional wrangling.

The study also reveals that 39% of Quebecers believe that in recent years Quebec has not been as close to the rest of Canada as it was before. Only 9% of respondents feel that Quebec and Canada have grown closer, while 53% think that the two are neither closer nor farther apart.

Oil: National Strategic Issue

Lastly, respondents to the Federal Idea survey were asked to comment on the major strategic issue of oil, an economic factor of primary importance for both Quebecers and other Canadians. The survey reveals that while 47% of Quebecers do not look favourably on the export of oil from Alberta to Asia via a pipeline through British Columbia, 74% are, nevertheless, in favour of shipping this resource from Alberta to Quebec by pipeline.

For additional details on the most recent survey by the Federal Idea, please contact the Executive Director, Mr. Jocelyn Coulon, at the following telephone number: (514) 951-0431.

The Federal Idea is a non-partisan think tank whose purpose is to foster quality discussion of all aspects of federalism through research, surveys and public activities. All studies and research published by the Federal Idea, including this new survey, can be found on its website at the following address: www.federalidea.ca

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SOURCE : THE FEDERAL IDEA
INFORMATION : RICHARD VIGNEAULT/ COMMUNICATIONS
(514) 497-1385

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Pierre Simard et Jean-Luc Migue

Sometimes, it is good to remember that we are privileged to be members of a federation that offers citizens the possibility to get away from decisions by their provincial governments that they find unacceptable. Let’s consider this!

For example, after the new Québec government announced its intention to increase income tax on the wealthy and the taxable portion of capital gains and dividends, some Quebecers considered leaving Québec.

Evidently, leaving is not that simple. Beyond the language barrier and the pain of leaving behind family and friends, there is a need to find a place where you are welcome. This is a challenge in a world where most countries are increasing their barriers to immigration.

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Éric Montpetit

There is little discussion of relations between the provinces in Canada. When the newspapers mention the topic, it is typically in terms of implausibility or dysfunctionality.

At the end of the 1990s, for example, the rapprochement between the governments of Lucien Bouchard and Mike Harris garnered considerable media coverage, but less to inform readers about the policies on which the two governments were cooperating than to discredit the “paradoxical” relationship between a social-democrat sovereignist government and a right-wing federalist government. The media coverage of the Council of the Federation, created in 2003 to encourage interprovincial cooperation, is no less negative. While the mandate of the Council is very wide, including the production of analyses in support of interprovincial cooperation, journalists only report on the difficulties that the provinces have in reaching common positions for negotiations with the federal government. Also, relations between the federal government and the provinces are generally more interesting to the media than relations between the provinces.

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Patrick Fafard and Patrick Leblond

In the twentieth century, promoting trade between countries was focussed, for the most part, on tariffs and associated non-tariff barriers. Over time the focus has shifted to a much broader agenda such that we no longer speak of “trade” agreements per se but rather “economic and trade” agreements or “second-generation” trade agreements. As a small open economy, Canada is at the forefront of this trend and is currently negotiating (or at least contemplating) a wide range of bilateral and multilateral second- generation agreements with a diverse set of countries around the world (Clark 2012).1 However, as the agenda expands beyond tariffs, the complexity of the agreements also expands. Even if a trade agreement like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is complex, newer agreements seek to address a wider range of issues including labour mobility, investor protection, mobility of business persons, public procurement, electronic commerce, and intellectual property. This wider agenda has important implications for federations or other broadly similar forms of multi-level governance (e.g., the European Union [EU]). In effect, negotiating such second-generation agreements requires close collaboration with provincial or state governments (member states in the EU), which have jurisdiction and responsibilities that are critical to the successful conclusion and implementation of a given agreement. In Canada, provincial and territorial governments, by virtue of their responsibility for health and education and their role as large buyers of goods and services, to name but two examples, have a critical role to play if Canada is going to successfully negotiate and conclude second-generation agreements.

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WHAT will become of the European Union? One road leads to the full break-up of the euro, with all its economic and political repercussions. The other involves an unprecedented transfer of wealth across Europe’s borders and, in return, a corresponding surrender of sovereignty. Separate or superstate: those seem to be the alternatives now.

For two crisis-plagued years Europe’s leaders have run away from this choice. They say that they want to keep the euro intact—except, perhaps, for Greece. But northern European creditors, led by Germany, will not pay out enough to assure the euro’s survival, and southern European debtors increasingly resent foreigners telling them how to run their lives.

This has become a test of over 60 years of European integration. Only if Europeans share a sense of common purpose will a grand deal to save the single currency be seen as legitimate. Only if it is legitimate can it last. Most of all, it is a test of Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel maintains that the threat of the euro’s failure is needed to keep wayward governments on the path of reform. But German brinkmanship is corroding the belief that the euro has a future, which raises the cost of a rescue and hastens the very collapse she says she wants to avoid. Ultimately, Europe’s choice will be made in Berlin.

Last summer this newspaper argued that to break the euro zone’s downward spiral required banks to be recapitalised, the European Central Bank (ECB) to stand behind solvent countries with unlimited support, and the curbing of the Teutonic obsession with austerity. Unfortunately, successive European rescue plans fell short and, though the ECB bought temporary relief by supplying banks with cheap, long-term cash in December and February, the crisis has festered and deepened.

In recent months we have concluded that, whether or not Greece stays in the euro, a rescue demands more. If it is to banish the spectre of a full break-up, the euro zone must draw on its joint resources by collectively standing behind its big banks and by issuing Eurobonds to share the burden of its debt. We set out the scheme’s nuts and bolts below. It is unashamedly technocratic and limited, designed not to create the full superstate that critics (and we) fear. But it is plainly a move towards federalism—something that troubles many Europeans. It is a gamble, but time is running short. Rumours of bank runs around Europe’s periphery have put savers and investors on alert (see article). The euro zone needs a plan.

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