Confederation in Crisis

Randall White, a political scientist, is also a Toronto-based economic
consultant and author of Voice of Region: On the Long Journey to Senate
Reform in Canada.

This contribution to the burgeoning literature on Canada’s own version
of the international political stress of the late 1980s and early 1990s
presents six papers that were given at a University of Western Ontario
symposium in November 1990. Three of the papers are by experts from
Quebec (André Blais, Edouard Cloutier, and Pierre Fortin). Three are by
experts from English Canada (Roger Gibbins, Grant Reuber, and Peter
Russell).

The last few months of 1990 represented a specific moment in the crisis
referred to in the title. Inevitably, the papers are tied to this
moment. Much has—and has not—happened since then; much else no doubt
will—and will not—happen in the future.

At just over 100 pages, however, the book is slim and digestible. The
authors are all able exponents (sometimes unusually so) of particular
points of view with longer-term resonance. Those with special interests
in the subject will find the papers, and some accompanying discussion,
worth a look. For more general readers, the volume documents one branch
of Canada’s so-called constitutional industry hard at work, in a
moment of high intensity.

The papers also offer occasional memorable sentences, going to the
heart of matters that necessarily elude the media as it reports on
events from day to day. Russell, for instance, observes that
“constitutional politics” can be “extraordinarily dangerous”
because, at bottom, they deal with “questions of justice and
identity.” And in Canada “we become very divided when we discuss
justice.” It might actually help if we paid somewhat more practical
attention to this side of the debate.