July 11, 2003
Charest calling the council's tunes
By NEIL WAUGH -- Edmonton Sun

CHARLOTTETOWN -- One of the Prince Edward Island papers - putting the great nation-building premiers conference in its proper perspective - ran a story about a raccoon yesterday.

The critter apparently climbed a chain-link fence surrounding a power transformer and got zapped. It knocked out the juice to 3,000 island homes for a few hours. The ex-coon got better play than the premiers.

There's a message there somewhere. Because despite the big build-up by P.E.I. Premier Pat Binns, who is this year's conference host, the Council of the Federation is hardly the launch of Canada Part 2.

Not anywhere close. And if Premier Ralph Klein doesn't watch out, it could come back to bite him politically.

Sure, Binns gave it his best shot when he called the council "a new era of constructive and co-operative federalism." Where have we heard all that before?

But when you sift through the details, those two chronic whiner words of Confederation - "fiscal imbalance" - keep popping up.

So it's going to be hard to take the new fathers of Confederation too seriously when one of the key functions of the council is to churn out papers describing how the provinces are so hard done by because the stingy feds won't give them enough tax transfers.

Of course, Canadians have been put through this wringer before.

Back in 1996 the premiers met in New Brunswick and hatched the idea that became the Calgary declaration, which also asked the feds to live up to their fiscal responsibility but stay out of the constitutional hair of the provinces at the same time.

So what's changed between then and now?

"The difference is at that time it didn't have the co-operation and participation of the Quebec government," Klein said.

Remember how Quebec separatist premier Lucien Bouchard was forced to storm out of the breakfast room when he (gulp) caught the preems talking about federalism over their eggs?

"Not only do we have the participation of the Quebec government, we have the Quebec government taking the lead," the Alberta premier beamed.

The premiers are so pleased that Charest wants to talk federalism again that they agreed to set up the council bureaucracy in Quebec City and foot the bill.

"The message to Jean Chretien is now there are 13 of us, not 12," Klein pointed out, "who are united in our desires to bring better services to Canadians in a truly federalist manner."

Of course, Chretien doesn't have to listen. Just like he hasn't paid the slightest attention to the Alberta government's Senate elections and is reportedly poised to appoint a prominent Calgary Sikh as Alberta's next senator.

Still, Klein's hedging his bets. Especially since Charest's council, which was designed more to appease the separatist sentiments in Quebec, doesn't appear to be anything more than a high-profile lobby group.

The council idea will go to Klein's special caucus meeting on western alienation this fall.

But so will the plan to build a firewall of legislation around the province to force the federal government to back off.

This is part of Klein's own political agenda to hopefully stem the growth of alienation and thoughts of independence in the province.

A poll commissioned by the Canada West Foundation determined that one in five Albertans feel the province would be better off out of Confederation.

And delegates at the Alberta PC convention in March openly debated using the "hammer" of independence to win concessions from Ottawa.

"It was music to our ears to hear a Quebec premier say we want federalism, but we want federalism that works," the premier said.

"Now we need one more player," Klein said.

And if the federal government doesn't want to play ball - and there's no good reason why it should - then what?

Paying for a burgeoning bureaucracy to run a parallel level of government in the country with absolutely no powers might not go over too well with Albertans.

Maybe a skunk will get hit by a potato truck so the P.E.I. papers can have another hot story on their hands.