Volume XVI, Numbers 11 & 12, November/December 1998
The Western Separatist Papers are published
monthly by W.S.P. Ltd. Address all correspondence to WSP, Box
143, 255 Menzies Street, Victoria, B.C. Western Canada V8V 2G6. A
one-year subscription is $15.00. Our e-mail address is:
wcc@islandnet.com. Visit the WCC on the web at:
http://www.westcan.org/
Phone us at: 250-727-3438 or fax us at: 250-479-3294
This cartoon is from the Toronto Evening News of May 1885. As Quebec held a large number of seats in the House of Commons, both the Liberal leader Edward Blake (left) and Sir John A. Macdonald (right) had to pay close attention to Quebec's concerns. Little has changed since then.
Mr. Christie,
My name is C. M. I am a part of a new provincial party forming in Alberta. We are currently petitioning to become registered. The name is The Alberta Independence Party. We see western separation as the only route left to us as Albertans and we are tired of talking. I hope you are not offended in any way that we formed a new party rather than joining yours. We believe that we need to focus the movement province by province. A central forum for ideas kind of leads back to the mess we are already in federally though on a smaller scale. There are a few of us working on this party throughout the province, but none of us are experienced in this sort of thing. If you could suggest any resources or refer us to anybody it would be greatly appreciated.
Our web-site is at www.albertaindependence.com <M>http://www.albertaindependence.com and we would like to exchange links with you if that is OK. We are still building the site right now, but the basis of it is up now. We would like to work together with you in the movement and are looking forward to your reply.
Truly,
C.M.
Doug Christie replies:
Your initiative and courageous action are to be commended. In one sense, you are right. It is right that a provincial initiative must be made first. Each province has the jurisdiction to separate. The province must be given the will to separate. In this sense you are right. It is wonderful that you are trying to do what you believe is right, and are willing to come forward with a solution that I believe is the only long-term political goal worth working for -- Independence. Naturally if you wish to link to our website you are welcome to do so.
We think however in one sense you may be wrong. There must be one co-ordinated movement for Western Canada, lest we fragment along provincial lines. We must be a <M>real united alternative. We would not be a federal state, but a unitary state, with one language, one parliament and equal power for all. This is the new alternative we propose, to build a great new nation.
We need to rationally discuss differences if they exist, for the better alternative we all want to build.
I hope we can have a meeting in the near future where these issues can be debated. Only with a clear idea and goal can a better vision be presented. The federalists just love to divide and conquer Western Canada, and I hope you realize how effective that has been in the past.
Douglas Christie
To the Editor:
IF Quebec separates from Canada, it will surely be easier for Western Canada to separate too. Perhaps you should be helping Premier Bouchard's current campaign. In any case, you may be interested in a new homepage, "Winning the United States to Quebec separatism", that contains arguments most relevant to Quebec but which may be useful to Western separatists as well. The URL is <M>http://members.aol.com/XPUS/ForQCsep.html.
Cordially,
L. Craig Schoonmaker,
Chairman, Expansionist Party of the United States, 446 West 46th
Street, New York, NY 10036; (212) 265-1081
Sirs:
I would like to introduce you to the site of The New England Confederation, a Coalition for New England's Future, an organization seeking greater sovereignty for the New England States.
If your website is still active, a link to our group on your links page (other.htm) would be appreciated. The main site is here.
Also, if you send our regular news bulletins, please feel free to send updates of events and victories to this e-mail address for inclusion on the NEC,CNEF News page - http://www.metro2000.net/~stabbott/NEnews.htm
Thank you,
Stephen Abbott
New Hampshire Chapter Chairman
The New England Confederation, a Coalition for New England's
Future
Please send your letters to the editor to: WSP, Box 143, 255 Menzies Street, Victoria, B.C. V8V 2G6, by e-mail to wcc@islandnet.com or by fax to 250-479-3294.
"We are all victims of our pursuit of images and clips. We are asked to reduce to 10 seconds our thinking on anything and everything."
Lucien Bouchard
"For the Rest of Canada, it is clear that the result could have been far better, and it could have been far worse. Nothing much has changed. Quebec seems almost deliberately to be revelling in its own unresolved ambiguity. So, once more, on the morning after an election, Quebec and the Rest of Canada wake to find themselves in the same lumpy and unforgiving bed that has been theirs to share for too many restless nights."
Editorial, Globe & Mail, December 1, 1998
"And for the cozy self-absorbed centre of Canada, it takes no thought at all to presume the rest of us are as obsessed. We're not. We'd like a solution, but there are more pressing worries: Oil prices are the lowest in a decade; hog prices even lower than that."
Catherine Ford, Calgary Herald, December 1, 1998
by Fred Williamson
(We continue our series of articles by Mr. Williamson, a history graduate of the University of Alberta, which analyzes the position of the West in Canada, and gives intellectual ammunition for the arguments for Western separation.)
There has been much ballyhoo in recent months about reforming Canada's Senate. Certain Western Canadians, particularly those in the Reform Party, are convinced that, if only the West could get a Triple-E senate, its problems and grievances within Canada would either be resolved or, at the very least, sufficiently modified. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The problems in the existing federal system are so fundamental that they cannot be solved even by making changes as fundamental as Triple-E Senate reform. As long as Western Canada maintains any political ties to Eastern Canada, it will continue to be an economic, financial, and political loser in such a relationship. A few facts are in order on the issue of Senate reform.
1. Even under a Triple-E Senate, Eastern Canada will have 60% of the seats. As there is little or no prospect for the addition of new provinces in Western Canada, there is little or no chance of this imbalance being rectified.
2. Even under a Triple-E Senate, the House of Commons (dominated by Ontario and Quebec) will still have the exclusive and crucial power to propose budgets. It is difficult to envision any sort of situation where Atlantic Canada will align itself with the West to defeat a Central Canada initiative. Even if this does occur, it will be rare, because the Eastern Canadian economies, unlike those of the West, are not financially independent. (Ontario's is, but its interests are radically different from those of Western Canada.)
3. A Triple-E Senate will be unable to do much of anything positive for Western Canada. This is because Eastern Canada will continue to dominate the House of Commons, and even under a Triple-E arrangement, agreement from the House of Commons would have to be secured. Since it is Western Canada that has been asking for positive changes, and since it is Eastern Canada that is most opposed to positive change (especially where Western interests are concerned) there is little chance that the House of Commons would ever agree to a Triple-E Senate's proposal for positive changes that would primarily benefit Western Canada and which may in fact be to the detriment of Eastern Canada.
4. A Real, Triple-E Senate will not come about in a "deal" with Quebec. Quebec, a financial winner within Confederation, may not secede at all. Even though some polls show support for a Tripe-E Senate in Quebec, these polls are based on the opinions of a largely ignorant populace. Quebec will never agree to a Triple-E Senate, because a Triple-E Senate represents a far greater loss for Quebec in national influence than it could ever gain from getting "Manpower Training" or "distinct society" written into the Constitution. Quebec will never agree to any arrangement that reduces its own power, which a Triple-E Senate would do. Quebec might agree to a "reformed" Senate that had little effective power, but nothing more. Quebec will never give up power on the national stage for more power provincially. Quebec wants both, and is determined to have both, as long as it remains in confederation, because it is in the interests of Quebec to have both.
5. The other Eastern provinces will pay virtually any price to keep Quebec in Canada. Consequently, even a Triple-E Senate will not work for the good of the West, but only for Eastern Canada. A Triple-E Senate will also be concerned about appeasing Quebec and its demands, regardless of which political party is in power.
6. A Triple-E Senate could not have stopped something such as the National Energy Program, which was a federal resource-revenue grab against Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. Other provinces either favoured the NEP or said nothing about it.
7. A Triple-E Senate may actually work against the Western provinces, because it will be dominated by the high unemployment, "have-not" provinces from the East. )Manitoba will in the end have to decide if it wishes to be a sister Western province or throw in its lot with the East.) The Eastern provinces will look on the West as sources of cash to be expropriated. (They will not treat Ontario the same way because Ontario dominates the House of Commons.) Consequently, a Triple-E Senate may well end up being not only a strong opponent of the positive change Westerners wish to see within Confederation, but may also in fact prove detrimental to the interests of Western Canada.
8. A Triple-E Senate will inevitably increase the power of the federal government in Ottawa at the expense of the provinces. This has been the experience in other federations as well. Because Canada is so poorly constructed in so many ways, and is so lacking in fundamental checks and balances (not to mention democracy), this danger is especially acute in Canada. Any increase in the power of the federal government in Ottawa (dominated by Eastern Canada) is a threat to Western Canada.
9. Triple-E Senate proponents overlook the fact that since 1982, the supreme legislating power comes from the Supreme Court, which is appointed by the Prime Minister. Since 1982, Parliament has ceased to be supreme, not only in terms of justice, but also in terms of legislating. A Tripe-E Senate will not change that fact, nor will it change the fact that, by law, three Supreme Court Justices must come from Quebec, which is more than the two Western Canada is normally allocated on the bench.
10. Triple-E Senate proponents assume that "Canada" is about fundamental justice and democracy. This is untrue. "Justice" in Canada is whatever the Prime Minister-appointed Supreme Court says it is on a given day (and whose decision is final). Canada was never much about "democracy" in the first place, which is why there is so little of it in Canada today, and is why what there is of it being eroded. (The Senate was created to act as check even on Eastern Canadian democracy).
Since anything other than a Tripe-E Senate is a violation of the federal principle, the best solution for Western Canada is to cease thinking it has anything to gain by remaining in political union with the Eastern provinces. The Triple-E Senate is no real solution for Western Canada's problems in it current political union with Eastern Canada.
by Fred Williamson
National parks in Canada serve as just one more reminder of the disproportionate contribution the West makes to Canada, a contribution which, naturally is usually not acknowledged.
Canada has 38 national parks, administered by the Federal government. Of these, 23 are in the Western provinces or the territories.
The total land area of national parks in Eastern Canada is 7031 sq. km. This is just 3.5% of the total national park area, even though Eastern Canada makes up 31.6% of the land mass of the country. Quebec, the largest province in Canada, is the most miserly. Only 0.06% of the province's land mass is set aside for national parks, compared to a whopping 9.5% of the land mass of Alberta, for example. Quebec's contribution is 0.46% of total national park land mass. Ontario, the second largest province, is the second-poorest contributor in this respect. Ontario only contributes 0.19% of its land mass to national park space. This is lower than even the tiny province of Prince Edward Island at 0.39%.
As a percentage of total national park area, none of the six eastern provinces match the contribution of any of the western provinces, even though Quebec and Ontario are the two largest provinces in the country. Quebec contributes less in this respect than the province of Nova Scotia, even though Quebec is many times larger than Nova Scotia.
Taking just the four western provinces, and excluding the territories, we find that Alberta's contribution is the greatest: 31% of all national park space is in Alberta; the total contribution of the Western provinces is 43% of the national total. The two territories contribute 53.5% of the total park land mass.
It would seem that the colonial attitude of Eastern Canada towards Western Canada is still around, and seems to be accepted even in much of Western Canada with a docility that must be deeply ingrained. For these parks are run by Ottawa, not the provinces, or even by a Western Canadian Parks Board. The federal government decides what goes on in these parks, how they are to be run, who shall work there, and they may soon have through their control of the courts, the say in what goes on in areas adjacent to these parks, regardless of such things as provincial jurisdiction over land and resources under the Constitution.
The above statistics are just one more example, and certainly not the most important one, of the disproportionate contribution Western Canada makes to the Canadian "federation."
(Source: Regina, CP, November 20, 1998)
A Saskatchewan man facing a hefty cut in his farm income said Friday that the federal government is ignoring the needs of western farmers.
"I ask you -- no I beg you -- when you go back to Ottawa please put a stop to the complacency regarding the plight of the western Canadian farmer," Keith Liebaert told a federal bureaucrat who was standing in for Wheat Board Minister Ralph Goodale at the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool's annual meeting.
The federal minister cancelled out, saying it was "physically impossible" for him to make it.
Joe McGuire, parliamentary secretary to federal Agriculture Minister Lyle Vanclief, promised delegates that concerns about a drop in farm income are well known in Ottawa.
"We've been listening to producers ever since this crisis began and kept escalating," said McGuire. "I can assure you there is no complacency in Ottawa. The minister has got his department and other departments working day in and day out on this."
Some agricultural groups estimate farmers need $1 billion to break even this year. In 1999, farmers are expected to lose $170 million -- the first negative income figure since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
As the official debates in the British Columbia legislature commence, the cautionary words of columnist Rory Leishman are quoted in full.
By Rory Leishman, London Free Press, November 16, 1998)
Prime Minister Jean Chretien has made a mockery of the principles of equality under law in Canada by announcing plans to ram a bill through Parliament that will establish an aboriginal government for the Nisga'a of British Columbia.
Unlike every other land claim treaty in the history of Canada, the recently concluded Nisga'a deal establishes a third order of government with paramount legislative powers over at least 14 areas of governance. This means that if a Nisga'a law on land, for example, conflicts with a federal or provincial law, the Nisga'a law will prevail.
While municipal governments also have legal authority over land use, in this, as in every other respect, they are subject to provincial law. Unlike the proposed Nisga'a government, no other existing aboriginal government or municipality has independent, sovereign powers.
Moreover, in every Canadian municipality, aboriginals are entitled to participate fully in local government on the same basis as all other local residents. In contrast, non-Indians living on territory within the jurisdiction of the new Nisga'a government will have no right to vote or run for office in Nisga'a elections.
That most Nisga'a voters have backed the treaty in a referendum is hardly surprising. The 5,500 members of the band stand to gain close to $500 million worth of benefits under the deal in addition to unprecedented governmental powers.
British Columbia Liberal Leader Gordon Campbell is outraged. He warns that if this Nisga'a settlement sets a pattern for the more than 50 other land claim negotiations under way in the province, all BC residents will be adversely affected.
"We will all have to pay the bill, which could easily exceed $13 billion provincewide," he says. "And we will all have to live with the consequences of constitutionally entrenching a model for aboriginal government that will forever deny non-aboriginal residents the right to vote and run for office -- the most basic of all democratic rights."
Backers of the Nisga'a treaty maintain that non-aboriginals who resent living under Nisga'a jurisdiction without any right to participate in the Nisga'a government should move elsewhere. But is that right? Does it make any kind of moral, economic or democratic sense to establish perpetually subsidized, race-based ghettos for Canada's aboriginal peoples?
The aboriginal policies of the federal government have been an abject failure. With few exceptions, they have served mainly to trap aboriginal peoples in morale-destroying welfare dependency in isolated communities beset with disastrous levels of chronic unemployment.
In a report on aboriginal benefits, the Reform party points out that the total cost of government benefits for Indians on reserves and Inuit living on Crown land amounted to an estimated $19,903 per person during 1995-96.
Why, then, are so many Indians and Inuit living in dire poverty?
Part of the explanation is that the great bulk of this money does not reach the average aboriginal family. It's siphoned off by governmental and aboriginal bureaucracies.
To enhance the efficiency of services for aboriginal peoples, Reform would transfer responsibility and funding to the provinces for most existing federal programs for on-reserve Indians that come mainly within provincial jurisdiction: namely, education, health care, welfare, housing, policing, local government and most other social services. In this way, on-reserve Indians would end up receiving provincial government services in the same way as all other residents, Indian and non-Indian alike.
Under the Reform plan, all remaining special federal programs for aboriginal peoples would be abolished in favour of increased federal payments directly to eligible Indians and Inuit. This approach would put more money straight into the pockets of people like the Nisga'a -- money they could use to purchase the kind of schooling, health care and other social services they want for themselves and their children.
This is the best solution. Such direct assistance should be available to all Canadians, regardless of race or ethnicity. Instead, the Chretien and Clark governments are bent on establishing racially exclusive governments for the Nisga'a and other aboriginal peoples. As a means of buying peace in our time from Indian radicals, this approach is not just unjust and undemocratic: it's also bound to be futile.
Write Mr. Leishman at The London Free Press, P.O. Box 2280, London, Ont. N6A 4G1 or fax 519-667-4528.
(Source: Jack Aubry, The Ottawa Citizen, Thursday 12 November 1998)
Most of the members of the Senate's influential banking committee have direct ties to the financial-services sector -- the very industry they will file a major report on within the next month.
Eight of 12 senators on the Senate's banking, trade and commerce committee have directorships with banks, insurance companies and mutual funds, while another just stepped down from the board of directors of the Toronto Dominion Bank.
. . .
The federal government has backed away five times in the past 15 years in bringing in a more stringent code of ethics for senators and MPs. Despite election promises by the Liberals, there has been no virtually no talk of bringing in new conflict rules since the 1997 election.
. . .
"Senators play it both ways. They say they don't have any power, so they don't need these measures -- but then they exercise great power in delaying the Pearson Airport agreement and the GST," said Mr. Conacher. "So the power is there and there has to be accountability."
. . .
Why Canada Died: The Tragedy of the Trudeau Constitution of 1982 by Patrick Brode, Republic of Canada Press, Windsor, 92 pages
This book by a lawyer, Mr. Patrick Brode, is an excellent discussion of the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Mr. Brode shows how the 1982 Charter turned Canada from a democracy into a judicial oligarchy. The Supreme Court now has the final say on law-making, and is now the most powerful body in making social policy. Law-making, says Mr. Brode, is not the legitimate function of the courts and he correctly notes that it was in 1982 that Canada, (the country that had existed since 1867) effectively died, though there is still a country by that name around today.
In typical Eastern Canadian manner, Mr. Brode sees Canada as an English-French duality. Writing from the perspective of Ontario, he praises the National Policy of John A Macdonald (p.2) and thinks that Prime Minister Macdonald's 1867 constitution was a "masterpiece" (p.82). Mr. Brode ignores the fact that "Canada" was in fact an Ontario/Quebec arrangement for the colonial exploitation of the hinterlands, especially Western Canada, and that the National Policy in effect was a massive transfer of wealth from the West to Eastern Canada. And one wonders: if the 1867 constitution was such a masterpiece, how did Canada ever get into its current mess? Mr. Brode pays little attention to the fact that it was the province of Ontario, more than any other, which made the 1982 Constitution and Charter he deplores, possible.
At the end of his book, Mr. Brode examines Canada without Quebec. He envisions a new country in which B.C., Alberta, and Ontario will forge a new, prosperous nation for the 21<M>st Century (presumably with Atlantic Canada included). He does not see that the Western provinces would only at their detriment and peril belong to any political arrangement with Ontario. It is Ontario that has, even more than Quebec, been responsible for robbing the West of its wealth and prosperity to benefit itself and its old cosy arrangement with Quebec. In the new nation of Western Canada, Ontario will not be invited to join, a possibility Mr. Brode and fellow Eastern Canadians seem not to realize as a possibility.
Mr. Brode acknowledges the massive transfer of wealth into Quebec of some $160 billion from 1961-1990 (without mentioning that almost all of this money was taken out of Western Canada through the Ottawa government). Mr. Brode mentions Quebec's 48% share of the national dairy market, a disproportionate share of national defense spending, and then asks about Quebecers: "Why should they vote to secede?" (p.83) Why, indeed.
A better question would be: "Why should the West remain?" Why should the West remain in such a farcical federation, one that continually punishes it financially and politically (not to mention spiritually). And why should the West remain, now that according to Eastern Canadian Brode, Canada really died in 1982, and what has replaced it is a judicial oligarchy, not a democracy, where what freedoms still remain to Canadians are being rapidly eroded. Most Westerners wish to live in a more democratic country, unlike Ontarians, who care little for such a thing. Ontario likes the federal Liberal Party. Ontario always sees its own interest as the "national" interest. Ontario would never be a fit partner with the West, in any political arrangement, for it is from Ontario, more than any other Eastern province, that Western Canada must separate itself if it is to have a future that is just, prosperous, and democratic.
(The book lacks a bibliography, index and source notes, which limit the book's value as a reference source.)
Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.
Samuel Johnson, 1759
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent . . .
This is alone life, joy, empire and victory.P.B. Shelley: Prometheus Unbound, 1820
If at first you don't succeed, Try, try, try again.
William E. Hickson, 1850
By perseverance the snail reached the Ark.
C.H. Spurgeon, 1889
Every day a thread makes a skein in a year.
Dutch Proverb
Who hangs on, wins.
Pennsylvania German Proverb
Pray to God, but keep rowing to the shore.
Russian Proverb
Without perseverance talent is a barren bed.
Welsh Proverb
I will spit on my hands and take better hold.
John Heywood, 1540
God helps those who persevere.
Koran
It is the character of a brave and resolute man not to be ruffled by adversity and not to desert his post.
Cicero, 78 B.C.
I will hold New Orleans in spite of Urop and all Hell.
Ascribed to Andrew Jackson, 1812
I am in earnest — I will not equivocate — I will not excuse — I will not retreat a single inch and I will be heard.
William Lloyd Garrison: in the first issue of the Liberator, Jan. 1, 1831
by Douglas Christie
Jacques Parizeau made a major mistake in Canadian politics: He told the truth during an election. This of course, is a liability for anyone in politics. He said in effect that Quebec should get more "booty" from Canada and when they get a negative response then "voila" winning conditions for a referendum. This too is what we have to look forward to for the next four years.
The P.Q. have won a clear majority. No one wants to admit that they will blackmail the rest of us for a negative reaction. When they get a negative reaction, they will have their referendum. The truth is the whole country will be focussed on pleasing Quebec for yet another four years. Every demand of Quebec must be met affirmatively, swiftly and politely, or else. How effective. A Quebec prime minister, a Quebec separatist government, negotiating the surrender of the rest of us. What a clever ploy. What a sad comment on our so-called Reform politicians that they will not attack this fraud of a government while they have the power. They are interested in a United Alternative so they can try to win Ontario. They too, it appears, would never want the truth told lest it result in ethnic conflict and the breakup of Canada. Better they think to quietly surrender the heritage of our forefathers for the sake of unity. Our language, our taxes, our future has to be sacrificed on the alter of Canadian unity.
Well when the time finally comes that we have to say no to Quebec, and Quebec finally leaves, we will be the people with a place for the resurrection of our Western national dream. Who else will have any solution, then?
In spite of devolution, the fires of nationalism are growing stronger as the taste of real power is experienced. The ability to actually control your own destiny, your land, your resources for your own people is an experience the Scots have never really had since the Union of Scotland and England under James I of England.
Long before that in 1213, Robert the Bruce had to fight to achieve recognition as King of the Scots and at Bannockburn, succeeded. The Scots have been subjected to English actual control almost ever since but have never given up the fight for their nation. The Scottish National Party (SNP) are supported by almost as many as the 72% who voted for a Scottish Parliament and Blair's Labour Party is worried. A large column in the New York Times, and republished in the Victoria Times Colonist recently, says: "New parliament fuels Scottish independence: Devolution of power was supposed to blunt the separatist movement, but it has produced the opposite effect."
Tony Blair is trying to win back the Scots to Westminster rule, but the experience of a Scottish parliament has apparently only whetted the Scottish appetite for real power which is just one step away. The sense of independence is somewhat like pregnancy. You can't be a little bit pregnant nor independent. The English have controlled with their superior attitude so many people's lives for so long it must come as a surprise that their neighbours the Scots still have a vision of their nation and want real power.
As Alex Salmon, SNP leader says: "When Scotland has independence, England will lose a surly lodger and gain a good neighbour." We feel the same way about Quebec and its independence. The future belongs to us.