The other day, I mentioned that Oliver Mowat, Ontario’s premier for much of our country’s formative years back at the end of the 19th Century, fought with prime minister John A. Macdonald over provincial rights. At the time, he was right. In today’s world, he would be very wrong. What is very wrong today is that we have been left with a constitution that is almost impossible to fix. We end up trying to work around the country’s constitution.
The problem is that our major social programs, that are more of a right than a ‘like to have,’ have to be negotiated piece by piece with the provinces and territories. It has become a form of self abuse that most federal politicians enter into with caution.
Every few years we re-open the arguments over Medicare. And yet we want to add a national drug plan. People would have laughed at you if you brought it up as Queen Victoria’s ministers were writing our constitution. So, what if daycare was only something a neighbour would offer at the time? Our constitution split the responsibilities of the different levels of government as they were viewed in the 1800s. Aldous Huxley, and his book Brave New World, were not born yet.
So, where does that leave Canadians? I doubt we would have a revolution. Hell, we get into better brawls in hockey games. It is doubtful that we are going to start a civil war. The péquistes in Quebec City have proved they are just a malicious bunch of bigots who want power exclusively for themselves. Compared to them, that silly woman who is premier in Alberta and her “Alberta Sovereignty within a United Canada Act” has people across Canada laughing.
Our world has just muddled its way through a deadly pandemic and our constitution proved to be a barrier to healing for Canadians. We had the federal government trying to shore up the country’s economy while the provinces struggled with trying to support our medical delivery system. Here in Ontario, we had a conservative government bleeding out the healthcare system. They blocked the hospitals from the extra funding needed to encourage medical staff. They just watched as our hospitals fell into disrepair.
But the feds and the provinces remained true to our outmoded constitution.
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Copyright 2023 © Peter Lowry
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