All things Canadian are now regional

The most important question that scholars must address in the years ahead is how Canada can survive and function when we finally acknowledge that all things Canadian are, in reality, regional. If we could start from scratch, how would we design Canada's political, administrative and judicial institutions? Answers to these questions which, at first glance, may appear esoteric in nature, may well prove practical and useful in the not too distant future. It is unlikely that Canada's constitutional impasse, Ottawa's constant preoccupation with the Quebec issue and the concentration of political power in a handful of individuals in Ottawa can continue. The pressure for change from Western Canada and more and more from Atlantic Canada, combined with new economic forces, if nothing else, will either have effect or the regions may simply give up; they may decide that the price of admission is too high and that it would be best to spend their limited resources and energy on other matters.

What does all this mean for the next research agenda? First, we need to understand better how Canada can continue to cope with its dysfunctional national political institutions. How can we best reform them without resorting to constitutional reforms? How can we take advantage of new information technologies to enable Canada's political and administrative institutions to reflect better the country's regional diversity and diversity of opinion within the population?

We also need to envision a future in which the national government is less and less a major actor or, at least, a vastly different one than it has been since the Second World War. The Canadian public no longer has sufficient confidence in their national government - a lack of confidence that appears to be shared by government itself - to be an active player on many policy fronts. Paul Martin, in his 1994 budget speech, spoke to this point when he observed "government has promised more than it could deliver and delivered more than it could afford." We need to understand how regional concerns can be better articulated in a new situation. How, for example, can sub-national governments and third party actors be assigned a greater role in policy implementation?

What about the federal public service? If it is important to have a public service representative of Canada's linguistic community and visible minorities, why is it not important that it also be regionally representative? To what extent, for example, is the federal policy advisory capacity located in the regions?

As Yogi Berra once observed, the thing about the future is that it has not happened yet. We still have some time to address these questions about Canada's future, to reshape the nature of government and its role in our lives. Still, we must acknowledge urgency in finding the right answers. We have played at the margins for too long in Canada, attempting one "reform" after another. The country has already begun to pay the price.

Works Cited

McGuire, Joe, MP et al. 31 May 1999. Atlantic Canada: Catching Tomorrow's Wave. Ottawa, Atlantic Caucus.