Federalism in Peril: Will Canada Survive?

Graeme S. Mount is a history professor at Laurentian University.

A series of position papers on the Constitution, delivered in 1991 and
published before the Charlottetown Accord was negotiated, might appear
to be of marginal interest. One might also suspect a product of the
Fraser Institute, which this was, to be written by right-wing
ideologues. This book is a pleasant surprise, with long-term relevance
and differing opinions. Some essays summarize Canadian attempts,
pre-Meech and post-Meech, to find a satisfactory Constitution. The names
of Sharon Carstairs and Elijah Harper never appear, and one would never
guess the relevance of Gary Filmon’s minority status in the Manitoba
legislature in 1986–1987, but what there is provides a good partial
review of the constitutional process.

There is a wide range of contributors, all of whom first presented
their submissions as papers at a 1991 McGill conference. On the far
right, Andrew Coyne of The Financial Post and The Globe and Mail says
little with which Peter Pocklington would disagree. Others, however,
include Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Eric Maldoff of Alliance Quebec, André
Raynauld of the Université de Montréal, The (Montreal) Gazette’s
William Johnson (an authority on Quebec and a firm upholder of minority
rights), and such knowledgeable Americans as Charles Doran and Earl Fry.
Andrew Cohen has written a powerful piece on the failure of the Meech
Lake Accord; Stephen A. Scott of McGill debunks the view propagated by
Brian Mulroney and Lucien Bouchard that there should be guilt over the
failure of the 1982 accord. While most contributors see Quebec
independence as costly to both Quebec and the rest of Canada, Jagdish
Handa, also of McGill, sees analogies between Canada’s evolving status
within the British Empire/Commonwealth and Quebec’s status within
Canada.

An essay by an observer of a successful federal system from another
part of the world (such as Switzerland’s or Australia’s) might have
been more appropriate than one by Verna Lawrence, a Chippewa from Sault
Ste. Marie, Michigan, but the conference organizers probably needed
token feminine and aboriginal perspectives. Lawrence provided both.