Commentary
Any suggestion that we should consider reopening Canada’s Constitution to solve our increasingly serious problems usually evokes snorts of derision and eye-rolling. The last attempts—Mulroney’s failed Meech Lake Accord in 1990, and Charlottetown in 1992—left the nation with constitutional fatigue. Those failures also left politicians understandably gun-shy of ever opening up that Pandora’s box again.
There was much high drama at the time. Would Quebec leave, would it stay? The nation bit its nails. But things did seem to settle down. Quebec didn’t separate. The country prospered through the ’90s and into the 2000s.
But things are heading south again. Rapidly. There is discontent in the air. Now, the West is increasingly unhappy with the Laurentian elite they believe is running the show. Now it is not Pierre Trudeau’s National Energy Policy that is driving them to distraction, it is his son’s “Just Transition” and “Carbon Zero” that are causing such angst. There is also Western discontent with an equalization formula that is seen as favouring Quebec, but changing that formula could reignite the same separation fears that drove both Meech Lake and Charlottetown. Meanwhile, Quebec and the other provinces all have their own grievances….