Should Canada Even Exist?

I remember Preston Manning speaking once about Question Period dynamics when Bloc members confronted the government. According to Manning, the place would turn into a circus, with BQ and Quebec Liberal members, including Chrétien, spitting and hissing at one another while Reform and ROC-Liberal members sat there feeling rather embarrassed. They reminded Manning of members of a divided and embittered family hurtling personal insults at one another.

There is no question that political dialogue in Canada has oftentimes been an extrapolation of political dialogue and conflict within the province of Quebec. When Canadian unity has been invoked by the national government, it has most often occurred through a Quebec politician who graduated to the federal level from his battles with separatists. I doubt if reasonable people, which naturally excludes Anglo bigots of the kind that are largely found in Ontario, ever disliked this. But I’m beginning too, and here’s why: The hatred embodied in the conflict between federalists and separatists in Quebec produces federal leaders who apparently have no regard for the rule of law. Such politicians will shove the rule of law aside when it gets in the way of the fanatical crusade against the enemy.

And so we keep hearing about how the federal government broke every rule in the book in the 1995 referendum, particularly spending and advertising laws. I needn’t remind anyone that the No side beat the separatists by less than a single point in that referendum; if the federal government had followed the rules, would the balance have tipped in the opposite direction?

Maybe, maybe not. And there are Liberals, the “generals and foot soldiers� of the federalist cause, who, in their private moments, would celebrate these violations of the law as a justifiable means to an end. But I would much rather have seen the end of Canada to the monstrous violations of the rule of law committed by the Liberals in that election. The majesty of the law carries significantly more weight to me than does the seething and ultimately phony nationalism and ideology of Liberal Canada.

Canadians should also know that their country is living on borrowed time – the 1995 abdication of justice by the Liberal Party merely bought us a little time. Tick tock…

Crossposted to Rempelia Prime