Okay, now I'm really alienated
PAUL SULLIVAN-Monday, January 1, 2001 -Globe and Mail
Boy, am I alienated!
By now, you've heard all about "Western alienation." That's what everyone west of Portage and Main is experiencing after Ontario won its third federal election in a row. Instead of freezing in the dark like you're supposed to, you Eastern bastards are running the country, and that has set off a fresh round of grousing from those of us in the West who would like to run the country instead.
A new Western separatist group, the Alberta Independence Party, has been launched. Apparently, electing 66 MPs vehemently opposed to the Liberal regime wasn't good enough for some of us.
Things are so bad, Liberal Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion is going to visit the West. And write newspaper articles. Formidable! If I wasn't alienated before, any exercise in the kind of "tough love" that M. Dion bestowed on the people of Quebec to straighten them out will send me right off the cliff.
The prospect of a sermon from M. Dion may also alienate those Westerners who aren't already alienated, and if he persists, we're likely to see an outbreak of independence parties in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and British Columbia -- maybe even the Yukon, for good measure.
If he really wants to help, M. Dion should just lie low for a while, and wait until the Prime Minister is finished with his year-end interviews and goes on to something else, like that New Economy he keeps talking about.
Before the "tough love" announcement, I was just a stranger in a strange land, where someone let Wiebo Ludwig write the rules. On the first day of 2001, the true new millennium, the dawn of Arthur C. Clarke's future, I'm represented by a leader who thinks the world is only 6,000 years old, guns are good, and hangin' isn't good enough for some varmints.
So I was pre-alienated. Now I'm completely at sea.
Despite what you read in the newspapers, there are many Westerners -- some of them new Canadians, others resident for generations or aboriginal -- who believe in the national idea of a Canada held together by something other than transfer payments and medicare.
This hypothetical Canada is a federation of people who transcend their regional differences and co-operate in order to build on the accident of history that threw us together in the first place. A people who cherish peace, freedom, tolerance and prosperity and who wish to promote these values globally, a people who understand what it means to steward the second-largest political land mass on Earth, a people who are excited about the future and their role in it.
"Federalist" Westerners understand that this national idea requires great patience. They have endured the National Energy Program, the CF-18 debacle, the Crow rate, Meech Lake, Charlottetown and "Sell your own wheat." They sent their kids to French-immersion classes and dutifully voted, even though, by the time the polls closed in Kelowna or Nanaimo, it was all over. They have participated in Canada. They are, no doubt, the "committed" Canadians to whom M. Dion so fondly refers.
But this is not a good time for these federalists. In British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, most MPs are itching to "reform" Confederation, which means downloading more power to the provinces so they can damn well do what they please, the kind of game Quebec has been playing for so long.
Only Manitoba, at the true centre of the nation, seems unwilling to let go of the idea of a real Canada united under the Maple Leaf. It's ironic, because the only maple native to Manitoba, the box elder or Manitoba maple, just vaguely resembles the Maple Leaf on the flag and the jersey. I didn't see a "real" Maple Leaf until my first visit to Ontario, experiencing an early frisson of Western alienation -- why couldn't they identify a universally Canadian symbol such as the Canada goose or a snowflake?
For Westerners who want their provinces to be full participants in Confederation, neither M. Dion's sound nor Alliance fury is palatable. Unlike those in Quebec who have become comfortable with separatist politics, they are unwilling to support further deterioration of federal powers, especially if it means throwing in their lot with Stockwell Day and his gang of social Luddites. But they are Westerners, and M. Dion is the embodiment of their worst nightmare, a know-it-all who knows nothing about them.
In his year-end musings, the PM has already rejected some of the ideas, such as an elected Senate, that would help build a more democratic, egalitarian political system. Accusing the West of parochial thinking and siccing his academic dog on us is not a legitimate alternative. If he really wants to overthrow the powerful spell of the Alliance, it's time to get serious and listen. Western alienation, despite all attempts to explain it away, is the real thing.
psulli@sullivanmedia.com |
