Debunking the nine per cent solution: Fighting the futility of federalism

Which Alberta MLA penned the following statement?

“No disrespect to Confederation is implied when the citizens of Alberta take for their motto: “Alberta first, last and forever.”

a) Ted Morton (PC)
b) Gordon Kesler (WCC)
c) William Aberhart (SC)
d) Alwyn Bramley-Moore (Lib)

While a,b or c may be the obvious choices, the answer is ‘d’, Alwyn Bramley-Moore.

While the fore mentioned have earned their places in Alberta history as defenders of provincial rights (although Kesler’s was fleeting, and Morton’s is a work in progress), Bramley-Moore’s place is especially significant.

Alwyn Bramley-Moore, Member of the Alberta Provincial Parliament for Alexandra Constituency penned these views in a book entitled Canada and Her Colonies or Home Rule For Alberta two years after he was elected to the legislature in 1909: Four years after Alberta entered Confederation.

Serving in the government of Premiers Rutherford and Sifton, Bramley-Moore became aware early on of the futility of attempting to deal with a distant, disinterested federal government. Specifically, his government had initiated lobbying to have the right to natural resources ceded to the province, the same rights that all provinces–except Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba– were given immediately upon entry to Confederation.

Their fruitless attempts to wrestle these rights away from the federal government gave Bramley-Moore a unique perspective about the true nature of Confederation;

“Nothing could have more forcibly brought home to my mind the injustice of a state of affairs by which a Provincial Government assumes the liabilities incident to the development of a vast country while the natural resources of that country are owned and controlled by a foreign Government.”

Almost a century later the essential conditions of Confederation have not changed. While Alberta was able to acquire the ownership of it’s natural resources in 1930, some 14 years after Bramley-Moore gave his life on the battlefields of France as a member of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, it still finds itself effectively neutered when it comes to affecting political change on a federal level.

Observations made by Bramley-Moore in 1911, when Alberta had a mere seven representatives in the House of Commons, ring true nearly 100 years later:

“Of what account are seven members among 200? Any influence they could exert would be infinitesimal. A 3 1/2 per cent solution may be efficacious when it comes to medical practice, but in the arena of the political conflict its effect is nil.”

With some 28 members representing Alberta out of a total of 308 Members of Parliament in 2005, the nine per cent solution is only marginally less infinitesimal, and hardly any more effective.

After a century of failed efforts by western politicians to affect any kind of reform on a federal level, a change of tactics is necessary if Alberta is to address the long standing grievances that threaten the province’s continued prosperity.

As long as Alberta is a member of Confederation, it is necessary that the province have representation in our federal Parliament. However, Albertans must come to the realization that it is not necessary to water down western values to appeal to the Eastern electorate in order to push the agenda of democratic reform and devolution to the forefront of Canadian politics.

For the next generation of Alberta’s representatives in Ottawa, the priority must be to work with any and all parties and politicians to achieve decentralization and democratic reform in both the House of Parliament and the Senate. While this is occurring federally, our provincial legislators must work together with our federal representatives to promote the best interests of Albertans. All of this is contingent upon Albertans stepping up to the plate and electing a provincial government intent on defending and expanding provincial rights to their fullest extent. It also means Albertans must stand outside the existing political parties and create a new movement, possibly an Alberta Party, to send Alberta-first representatives to Ottawa.

Should Albertans choose to accept the challenge and elect both a slate of Alberta Party MP’s to Ottawa, and a provincial government intent on defending provincial rights to the legislature, one of two scenarios would likely unfold:

1.) An Alberta Party, free to align itself with the remaining Conservatives, the Bloc or even the Liberals or NDP, may find itself holding the balance of power, and in good position to wrestle concessions away from the party in power. Combined with efforts by an Alberta first government, this approach could bring about reforms on any number of issues where traditional/ third/fourth parties have continually failed, or…

2.) Alberta Party MP’s will be marginalized and ignored, unable to form effective partnerships or coalitions within Parliament. The federal government will continue to demonize the province, using Alberta’s provincial government as a political pariah to promote their own centrist agenda.

Either way, we will have been given an accurate measure regarding the desire for change among Canada’s ruling elite. Should the first option come to fruition, the strategy may be adopted by other provinces, with provincial governments moving to increase their areas of jurisdiction. This would bring into being a decentralized Confederation that would be well on it’s way to accommodating western alienation, Newfoundland aspirations and Quebec nationalism under one umbrella.

Should we see the second option come to pass, then it is quite possible that Alberta’s fate outside of Confederation will be sealed. The people of this province will be given proof positive that the system does not work to address Alberta’s grievances, despite similar successes enjoyed by Quebecois nationalists. Should MP’s present a list of demands similar to the one proposed recently by senator-elect Link Byfield, which subsequently go unrealized, then Alberta voters may be wise to heed the words of Alwyn Bramley-Moore;

“A radical procedure, and a rather practical one in its way, would be to hoist the flag of independence… After a banquet or two and a patriotic oratory, the province might express a desire to be reinstated in the Confederation, and then she would be in the position to make a bargain”

Unfortunately for Canada, should it come to this point, the time for making deals will be over.

Cross posted to Dispatches From The Western Alien Nation.