Angry in the Great White North

A division exists in this country, and it is a healthy one. Well, maybe not healthy, but more legitimate than the divisions we’ve had in this country before now.

I’m talking about the urban-rural divide that has taken shape, with the Conservatives being shut out of Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver, while making major gains in suburban and rural Canada.

Any divide is something to be concerned about, but what we’ve had before was awful, mostly because those divides were created by Liberal governments refusing to follow the rules.

First, we’ve had the classic English-French problem. Why? Just about all French-speaking Canadians live in Quebec. I know not all of them do, but only New Brunswick has a sizable French-speaking minority. Every other province has pockets here or there, if that.

But we live in under a federal system. Federalism is supposed to help deal with that sort of thing. You break the country up into semi-autonomous portions and divvy up the powers between the federal government and the bits. That way each bit can manage its business as it sees fit. Each bit can tailor its services and laws to address the unique needs and desires of its citizens.

The federal level provides general protection, a symbolic and practical link between the bits, and a set of shared laws to ensure that all citizens, regardless of the bit they live in, are treated fairly. In my mind, the most important of those laws is the one that says if you don’t like the bit you live in, you are free to move to whatever other bit you like, and no one can stop you. That is a major difference between these bits and true nation-states.

Beyond that, I don’t think a federal government should care much what goes on inside the bits. But our federal government for years has been meddling in provincial matters. Health care, education, natural resources -- nothing happened in the provinces that a Liberal government in Ottawa didn’t believe it had reason to make laws about.

I think a lot of the fuel for separatism in Quebec comes from that, and the restoration of proper respect for federal and provincial jurisdiction will choke off that fuel supply.

But that lack of respect for provincial jurisdiction created the other big divide in this country -- East versus West. Why? Why should it matter how Alberta wants to run its health care system? If the people in the province want to spend provincial money on a two-tier system, so what? If you live in Ontario and like their scheme, move to Alberta. If you live in Alberta and prefer Ontario’s solution, move to Ontario.

I know moving is not trivial, but the fact is, provinces are supposed to be areas where local solutions are developed. But instead, Liberal governments have tried to force everyone to toe the same line. These governments move great sums of money around in transfer payments trying to make each province look the same as every other province. What’s the point of having provinces? Let people move. Make it easier for people to move. How else will a provincial government know whether they are serving the people in their province well? If people look to the next province over and see the same poor set of services and the same high taxes, why incur the extra cost of moving?

The one province that has done the most in trying to make its own rules, Alberta, unsurprisingly is the one province most people want to move to.

French versus English. West versus East. These are false fights, because a federal system should allow the differences to flourish, and should allow citizens to find the place they feel most at home, while still being Canadian.

So what about urban versus rural? Well, that is a real difference, and it exists in every province, no matter what the language or longitude. Urban dwellers typically depend on government services more than materially self-sufficient rural dwellers. Rural dwellers, in particular farmers, depend on structured and controlled markets more than laissez-faire capitalists in the big cities.

Crime. Pollution. Media. Transit. Markets. All of these and more are issues that impact rural and urban folks very differently, because their environments are so different.

The incoming Conservative government seems to have made great strides in dealing with the imaginary divisions in this country, before even taking office, simply by promising to follow the rules. Remember, a fedreal system is designed to eliminate the stresses caused by those divisions by creating formal divisions in the country. Canada has wasted untold amounts of time and money dealing with divisions for which the solution already existed. More frustratingly, a solution that was already implemented in Canada, just not followed.

But the division that has appeared on Monday, the divide between urban Canadians and those who live outside the big population centres, is real, and time and money needs to be spent on coming up with solutions.

Luckily we have a model in the US, a country that has not been wasting its time because it does actually respect its own system of government, and whose judicial branch is only all too happy to make sure that federal and state governments follow those rules. As a result, I think the US is much farther ahead in coming up with innovative solutions to how to make cities work, and how to support rural communities. I don’t pretend to know which, indeed if any, of those solutions could apply to Canada, but I’m hopeful that since now we have a chance to stop wasting our time with these problems of our own making, problems for which the solution has been staring us right in the face, we can start working on this one.