Plan B: The Future of the Rest of Canada

Terry A. Crowley is an associate professor of history at the University
of Guelph and the author of Agnes Macphail and the Politics of Equality.

Plan B doesn’t quite have the ring of Catch–22, but according to
former British Columbia Liberal leader Gordon Gibson it might amount to
much the same thing. His Fraser Institute report is a consideration of
what might happen should Quebec’s 1995 referendum on sovereignty be
successful. Wisely rejecting the idea that the rest of Canada would
simply carry on as it had before losing a quarter of its people (the
current Plan A), Gibson attempts to outline some of the issues that
would have to be tackled. The enormous extent of the public debt and a
Western anti-Ottawa attitude color many of his remarks. Gibson advocates
radical decentralization of government services and argues that a new
constitution should be formulated by a constituent assembly and ratified
in provincial referenda. Whether Gibson’s report is regarded as
political fiction or future history will be decided only by those
prepared to consider Plan B.