Keep in mind I haven’t thought this through too clearly. I’m just winging it here. With ten provinces, Canada has at least three too many. East of Quebec – yes, rest of Canada, there is an east of Quebec – there are four provinces who, collectively, administer less than 6% of the total Canadian land mass and have just over 7% of its total population. Their combined populations and annual budgets don’t even approach that of the city of Toronto, and yet four separate provincial governments, and the associated bureaucracies, are required for their administration.
While I am normally an advocate of greater decentralization of power, believing that political power best resides with the people whose lives are most influenced by it, in the case of Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, I increasingly believe that bigger actually is better. The Atlantic provinces are the have-not poster children of Canada, and no small part of that is due to the enormous costs, both in terms of finances and efficiency, of four duplicated administrations where one would suffice.
These divisions also serve to fracture the political clout that the region might hold with the central government. When Ottawa is negotiating with Atlantic premiers, as it has been heatedly doing these days over the fractured Atlantic Accord, itself the result of such negotiations, the adage of divide and conquer applies. This is not true when Ontario, Quebec or Alberta are at the bargaining table, because, despite their significantly larger populations when compared to Atlantic Canada as a whole, they come to the table with a single political voice: they cannot be divided from themselves. Where federalism is concerned, the Atlantic provinces have the same concerns, the same interests. What’s good for one is almost certainly good for the others: we are a common people. A unified voice would serve to strengthen their collective starting position in federalist matters.
It is time for a political movement to be born in these provinces that is dedicated to their unification. Let’s call it Atlantica, although that is already the moniker of a corporatist political/economic movement that seeks a different (evil) kind of collective behaviour between the Atlantic provinces and their New England counterparts. But I like the principle of Atlantica, if not its corporatist agenda and motivation, so I am keen to co-opt the term from their soul stealing clutches for a more folksy agenda of my own. Political parties advocating this sort of unification should begin organizing in all of these provinces immediately. The success of regionalist parties in Canada has been clearly demonstrated by the Parti and Bloc Quebecois’, and the new Atlantica party could draw some inspiration there. Or maybe the Green Party in the individual provinces could take on this cause. I believe the people of the provinces would support such a movement, but the political structures at the helms of the individual provinces would not. Nobody advocates change that threatens his own comfortable position.
But it’s like I said – I’m just winging it, here.
Posted by David Croft on June 26, 2007 at 3:48 pm
It has just come to my attention that there is, in fact, already an Atlantica Party. My apologies to them for advocating the creation of something that already exists, and shame on them for not getting the word out better.
Posted by robin on June 26, 2007 at 6:08 pm
makes complete sense from a practical point of view. i suspect that one would run into some serious cultural protectionism however – particularly from the New Brunswickers, being our only bilinugal province. Newfoundlanders and Islanders might beat some drums, as might the NSers (though in the case of NS, probably less so, since there is little doubt where the seat of power would go), but I would have little sympathy for them, as I suspect there is little that actually defines someone from PEI as being from PEI other than they happen to be from PEI.