To read and hear certain media in English Canada, the Canadian Confederation is in the midst of a “crisis of national unity”. Nothing less. A crisis where the federal government and the provinces are tearing each other apart… with the exception of Quebec, this time. Quebec autonomism has made its mark in Canada, to the point that this new neo-autonomist version of the ROC rivals that of the Coalition Avenir Québec government, or even dethrones it.
This Quebec abstention from the most recent Canadian dissensions is above all circumstantial. The economic nationalism of the ROC provinces is embodied in two federal regimes that Quebec has never joined.
First, in its eternal fight against Ottawa, Alberta threatened to leave the Canada Pension Plan — taking with it 53% of the funds, for 16% of the contributors — in order to create its own independent plan ( as Quebec did from the start, with its Régie des rentes, in the 1960s). Such withdrawal should be negotiated; the governments of Ottawa and the majority of the provinces are opposed to it, worried about seeing the nest egg of millions of workers collapse. However, although Prime Minister Danielle Smith seemed to back down, she has not officially given up on the idea.
Then, the temporary exemption from the federal carbon tax for oil heating gave way to a unanimous request from the provinces subject to it to see this exemption extended in an “equitable” way to all heating sources.
The common front is not only conservative, the NDP premier of Manitoba, Wab Kinew, having added his voice. And the strategy of confrontation is no longer confined to the Prairies. Although it remains more head-on: Saskatchewan is directly threatening to no longer collect the carbon tax as of January (after having contested it, in vain, all the way to the Supreme Court), while Alberta is also letting it hang in the balance. invoke its Sovereignty Act in order to ignore the federal target of electric carbon neutrality required for 2035.
Justin Trudeau only has to deal with a nationalist Quebec, but now with a majority of provinces also swollen with an autonomist impulse.
At the end of their meeting in Halifax on Monday, the provincial premiers even agreed (with the exception of two territories, which were absent) to explore the possible adoption of laws which would henceforth require, as required by Quebec, that Ottawa goes through their own governments to finance infrastructure projects in municipalities.
During this time, the government of François Legault has not renounced all demands against Ottawa. The agreement on health financing has still not been signed. Quebec also refuses the federal dental care program, as well as the one expected soon for drug insurance. But the antagonism promised by François Legault, then seeking a strong mandate before his re-election, has since given way to a pragmatism seeking gains in the first place.
Weakened and struggling with repeated external crises, Justin Trudeau’s government could well have done without this new autonomist front of the Canadian provinces. And François Legault will have to be careful not to see his own nationalist requests thus eclipsed.