EDITORIAL PAGE Quarreling keeps Canada together

Canada must someday come to terms with its flawed constitution, but its failure to do so through the Meech Lake accord is not going to spell the end of the country. The political stability that has characterized Canada for more than 100 years will withstand Meech Lake. There’s no doubt that tensions will continue for years as a result of Manitoba and Newfoundland’s failure to ratify the accord. Meech Lake, after all, is only the latest episode in a chapter that began in 1976 when Rene Levesque’s Parti Quebecois was first elected provincial government on a platform of separatism for Quebec.

That election raised fears Canada would fall apart. Those fears led to a 1980 referendum in Quebec on “sovereignty association,” or the notion that Quebec separate from Canada but retain some economic union.

It was that referendum that sowed the seeds for Meech Lake. During the campaign leading up to the referendum there was a fervent commitment on the part of politicians, both federal and provincial, that if Quebec would reject sovereignty association, the rest of the country would renew the terms of confederation and recognize Quebec’s special place within the nation.

That was a promise not kept. Despite the words of commitment made to Quebec in 1980, the renewed political contract that resulted in 1982 was a constitution that excludes Quebec, that gives every province the right to opt out of contitutional provisions merely by invoking a “notwithstanding” clause, and that gives every province the right to veto constitutional amendments thereby requiring unanimous approval for any change.

This unworkable document was the legacy left to Canada by the governments of the day.

Nevertheless, in 1987 a compromise, agreed to by all 10 provincial premiers and the prime minister, was put forward in the form of the Meech Lake accord that would have seen Quebec become a signatory to the constitution. Three years later, despite one province reneging on its ratification of the original accord and two other provinces ignoring the undertakings agreed to by their premiers, a further consensus was reached that Quebec might sign.

But then Manitoba said it couldn’t ratify the agreement in time and Newfoundland decided it wouldn’t bother to vote on the matter.

So Meech Lake dies. It is a fate many say the accord deserves — because it gave in to Quebec or because Brian Mulroney began the latest negotiations too late or because the meetings were held in “secret” (although the nation became weary of every detail being endlessly discussed) or because the concerns of aboriginal people were not addressed or any one of a hundred concerns.

In truth, it is the very squabbling between interest groups that keeps Canada together. Meech Lake would have been too neat a solution.

There is a fine tension between the parts that make up this “community of communities” as former prime minister Joe Clark once called it. The dispute between those parts will never be resolved. Bickering may drain our efforts from more productive pursuits, but that tension keeps us motivated. Western pride drives the prairie provinces with the notion that central Canadians can freeze in the dark without western oil, Quebec “nationalism” has engendered a vibrant entrepreneurial class among francophones, Ontario’s prosperity gives it a proprietary interest in keeping the country alive.

The trick to Canadian unity is to maintain that feuding between members without slipping too far into animosity and bitterness.

This country will never be united the way the United States is united, nor should we want to be. But neither should we feel compelled to fall apart. Meech Lake would not have put an end to this uniquely Canadian contradiction — that the country is united by each region’s self-interested demands. It would only have solved an impasse created by a constitution that has very little validity anyway without the participation of all members of confederation.

Confederation has nurtured the regions of the country to the point where they have the strength to stand up and seek their own goals. If that is merely to thwart another region’s ambitions, so be it.

What we should look for now is not a solution, for that will never come. What will continue is the ongoing process of recognizing first one region’s selfish interests, then another’s, then another’s. That constant pursuit of each region of its own selfish goals is what will keep Canada together, because ultimately each region knows it can only make those demands within this improbable confederation.