Adscam, Federalism, and Ignatieff

We’ve had occasion to discuss the foreign policy outlook of Michael Ignatieff, who’s been touted as future Liberal Party leadership material. We’ve also taken note on the question of federalism and national unity in Adscam (see this link too as well as this one).

Now, Michael Ignatieff has turned his attention to fixing our domestic politics by calling for a Royal Commission on the state of federalism in the wake of Adscam (Nat Post, subscription required).

His reasons? In part, I’m sure for the same reasons that politicians use Royal Commissions: delay, delay, and delay (hat tip: kaqchikel). As if Martin’s call for waiting until the end of the Gomery Commission isn’t galling enough. Yet, there seem to be substantive reasons too:

We are heading into another moment of existential challenge. Despite all the vital ties that bind — flag, currency, the Charter, common social programs and economic prosperity — we are aware that one vital institution that binds us together, the federal political party, is failing us.

…

What makes the current situation serious is that our constitutional crisis is rapidly becoming systemic: Atlantic provinces discovering new energy wealth are seeking to patriate this wealth for their own development alone. Hard-pressed Ontario is asking how it can meet the steadily escalating costs of its commitments in health and education and is raising fundamental questions about its historic role in equalization. Alberta has its own concerns with equalization. Saskatchewan wants to re-negotiate its deal. Strapped municipalities — many of them larger than some provinces — are asking where they fit into a fiscal federalism constructed primarily to distribute taxation and revenue between federal and provincial governments.

Successive federal and provincial governments have compounded the problem with case-by-case improvisation, making deals that are slowly provoking a systemic crisis, in which Canada backs its way, without fully intending it, into an ever more asymmetrical, and ever more unsustainable, fiscal crisis.

In other words, no single party is capable of delivering a Trudeauesque centralist/statist vision that the provinces are willing to swallow.

And what is wrong with that? The fallacy of Ignatieff’s call for alarm is that he thinks that the country will crack up unless there’s a strong federal government dominating the provinces.

However, the problem of assymetrical federalism, as he sees it, is not the fact that there are side deals to Saskatchewan or Newfoundland. But because national politicians since Trudeau have tried to destroy the constitutional federal-provincial balance found in the Canadian constitution through various spending programs.

Canadians wouldn’t be “exhausted” (Ignatieff’s terms), if politicians like Trudeau hadn’t tried to stuff a central Canadian/statist vision of Canada down the throats of the rest of us.

What might make the situation “dangerous” now is that politicians like Martin will play the unity card, especially for Ontarians (also consider Peter Rempel’s analysis). Except this time, Quebecers will scoff. Maritimers are undecided. For our part, Westerners no longer say “the West wants in.” Instead, as the Canada West Foundation has found, the new slogan is “leave us alone.” The combination of Quebecers scoffing at the Liberals, and Westerners calling the Liberals’ bluff, means not only that the unity card is no longer be viable, but that voters identify its use with crooked politics.

As with the crooks involved with Adscam, Martin seems willing to risk the country for the sake of his party.

Go ahead and try it.

Alternatively, as David Warren put it yesterday, Canadians can vote for a party whose national unity strategy is to return federalism to its original federal-provincial balance.