Last week we witnessed Alberta’s government attempt to take credit for the Arctic Winter Games removing its vaccine mandate.
A government dominated by minority views is bullying an international sport organization into complying with its stance, and the optics only look good to people who hold said views. The rest of us stared at the scene in disbelief.
This and the Alberta premier’s nonsensical Sovereignty Act — guaranteed to be shot down by the courts — left me thinking; do provincial legislatures do anything other than create drama anymore?
Previously, I have argued Northern territories should be elevated to provinces. Today, the opposite argument — perhaps we should consider a Canada without provinces.
A relic of the British empire, provinces were created when communication technology didn’t exist. The fastest the Crown could get orders from London to Ottawa was by sea and going farther inland required trains or horses. Breaking authority down into provincial jurisdictions was key to imperial stability — you can’t direct people when it takes weeks to get a message to them, so having a person in charge whose allegiances match up to yours was the next best thing.
But that was the 19th century. Today, I can send a message anywhere on Earth and have a reply within minutes. Precursors to health and child care aside, I’m hard pressed to think of anything of real benefit to come out of provincial governments in recent history. These middle-men seem to only serve the interests of the dominant political party within their borders.
An example: In my birth province of Alberta, one of the ongoing beefs with the federal government is the federal equalization program. The program takes a portion of income tax collected by the federal government and then divides it among provinces. Ask around in Alberta and you’ll hear about how it’s actually a Liberal conspiracy to take money from Albertans and funnel it to Quebecois. This provincial myth — based on cherry-picked data — has absolutely zero basis in reality, but keeps a lot of Albertans voting for the party promising to “take the fight to Ottawa.”
Ironically, when Stephen Harper was Prime Minister, the equalization formula came up for review, and he left it as it was. There was nary a peep out of Alberta, in spite of how serious a problem the program supposedly was. Years later, Justin Trudeau took the helm and again left it untouched — and people started screaming about equalization again. Literally nothing changed, but the United Conservative Party rode people’s selective outrage to power.
If you looked at any other province dominated by a “take the fight to Ottawa” party, you’d probably find they haven’t fixed any grievances with the federal government either. Why would they? Perpetual anger is a proven Orwellian path to perpetual power.
Abolishing provinces could remove tons of burdens on Canadian business. Imagine only one set of regulations to follow, no cross-border infrastructure disputes, Canada-wide free trade.
We love to blame Ottawa for almost everything, but the majority of problems in Canada stem from conflicting provincial jurisdictions.
Ottawa could easily take over the work of the provinces, reducing duplication of services, thinning bureaucracy, cutting red tape and slashing income taxes. Indigenous and municipal governments would be free to collaborate across former borders on longstanding issues like the condition of the Dempster Highway.
These endless, blatantly partisan provincial temper tantrums are an outrageous waste of tax dollars and human capital. If all we get from these billion-dollar institutions are predictable soap operas that go nowhere, we’re justified in asking if they’re still relevant.