Max Bernier and the Constitutional Con.

   For most Canadians, the name Maxime Bernier doesn't mean whole lot. If prodded some might remember him as being that guy who dated that girl who was friends with the Hell's Angels and left important government documents at her apartment. After that bit of nastiness, he rightfully was stripped of his cabinet position and has been languishing on the back-benches ever since.

  Lately Bernier has been burnishing his reputation as something of a Canadian Libertarian and one of the more doctrinaire Conservatives (this, and the fact that he's openly disagreed with Harper on occasion has many observers touting him as a potential leadership rival should Harper fail for the third time to win a majority). I don't particularly care much for the Conservatives either in tone or ideology, but one comment made by Bernier recently particularly rankles.

    Bernier has been fancying himself something of a Constitutional purist of late - arguing that the Canadian government should do away with the complexities of 21st Century federalism and return to the true spirit of the BNA Act 1867. On his website he recently opined:

Clearly, our goal should be to bring back the balanced federalism envisioned by the Founders. It should be to restore our federal union, as Wilfrid Laurier and most people understood it back then.
This would be done by putting an end to all federal intrusion into areas of provincial jurisdiction. Instead of sending money to the provinces, Ottawa would cut its taxes and let them use the fiscal room that has been vacated. Such a transfer of tax points to the provinces would allow them too fully assume their responsibilities, without federal control.

     There are more than a few problems with this proposal - not the least of which is conflating Wilfrid Laurier with a Father of Confederation - something that would have been news to old Wilfie! But mainly my objections to this line of reasoning is that it is fundamentally misrepresents Canadian political history and is intellectually dishonest.

      For those who haven't been following the story so far - the constitution agreed upon by Sir John A MacDonald and The Gang in 1867 was a highly centralized one where the federal government would be responsible for all of the important levers of control - currency, trade, transportation, taxation, immigration, defense, and international relations. The provinces would deal with more local concerns, most notably in the areas of health, education and social welfare (that these traditionally fell under the purview of the Catholic Church should be noted - provincial control over these areas was central to getting Quebec to agree to Confederation). This makes sense from a 19th Century viewpoint - nation-building was the order of the day, without a strong federal union it was thought that the Americans, who had just finished fighting a bloody civil war, might turn their gaze northward.

     Of course it goes without saying that the world has changed greatly since 1867 - we're no longer worried (too much) about the Americans unleashing the full force of their military might upon us, and healthcare, education, and social welfare have become extraordinarily important portfolios.  Healthcare has become especially important - it being widely regarded as not only a governmental responsibility, but also a defining national value.  Of all the provincial responsibilities, healthcare has been federalized the most. And this makes sense - there is a dramatic disparity in affluence between the provinces - and a basic sense of fairness and decency would dictate that a Canadian should be able to access similar levels of healthcare regardless of the province in which they reside. Since not every province has the taxation base to adequately ensure similar levels of care, the federal government, through the Canada Health Act, sends transfer payments to the poorer provinces to make up the difference. In other words, the Canada Health Act can, and should be, seen as a unifying force in Canada.

     What Bernier is proposing is to take the federal government out of the healthcare game altogether. I know he doesn't mention healthcare specifically in the quoted text, but make no mistake, that's what he's talking about. You'll notice that he characterizes transfer payments as a "federal intrusion" into provincial jurisdiction, and that he thinks we should become more "balanced". The implication is clear - that the modern way of doing things is fundamentally at odds with the intentions of the Fathers of Confederation (as an aside - I kind of hate this phrase). The reality is actually the opposite. If we actually want to honour the vision of Sir John A MacDonald, then we will keep these "federal intrusions" into provincial jurisdictions. As I noted earlier - these transfer payments are essentially in place to strengthen the ties between provinces. Contemporary Canada is far more decentralized than Sir John A would ever have wanted. By loosening the moorings of the defining national ethic (publicly funded healthcare), Bernier would effectively make Canada more far decentralized than it already is.

    Actually, one wonders what Maxime Bernier would think about MacDonald's fondness for disallowance and reservation. MacDonald's vision of a federal union was so strong that he often used this power to over-ride decisions made at the provincial level. Think about that - in the 19th Century, the premier of Ontario (for example) could be unilaterally over-ridden by the Prime Minister for no reason other than the fact that he felt like it. Somehow I doubt our libertarian MP would be comfortable with such authority. An authority, I might add, that still exists, it was never formally revoked.

     Bernier's proposal is not only historically blinkered, but it also is fundamentally dishonest. The actual, unavoidable, result of such a policy would be to bankrupt healthcare and usher in more private ownership of it. As it currently stands, healthcare costs account for roughly 30% of a given province's budget. That percentage is astronomically high - which is a big reason why one never hears of any provinces outside of Quebec (for different reasons altogether)  demanding the federal government take their hands off of healthcare - it's too important and too popular to play the jurisdiction game (incidentally, the jurisdictions are nowhere near as water-tight as the Berniers of the world would have you believe). Bernier knows this. He may be many things, but from what I can gather, a dummy he isn't.  But by framing the argument in such a manner, he's hoping to obscure the obvious outcome (end of public healthcare) with pseudo-intellectual historicism.  The reason why is obvious, it would be political suicide to come out and say "healthcare should be privately run". If he did that, he wouldn't win a seat east or west of Alberta :).

     In many ways it reminds me of Lord Durham's report of 1840 - if you recall, that report called for Upper and Lower Canada to be united into a single province with equal representation. What sounded like egalitarianism was really an attempt to render French Canadians irrelevant - it was widely assumed that the English Protestant minority in Montreal would always side with the English Protestant majority in Ontario and thus render the French majority impotent. (it didn't work out that way - mostly because Baldwin and Lafontaine were awesome, but that's definitely a post for another day)

     In a sense, I can understand why Bernier would want to position himself as such - Libertarianism has never been a strong current in Canadian politics, but it certainly has been for our neighbours to the south. The much discussed Tea Party movement (who look surprisingly like Ron Paul fans from 2008) are heavily influenced by libertarianism (and nativism, but that's a story for another day). Many of the Republican candidates favoured by the Tea Party - Christine O'Donnell, Rand Paul, Joe Miller, Sharon Angle - have positioned themselves as something they call "Constitutional Conservatives". I suspect that Bernier is hoping to appeal to Canadians who view those politicians favourably.

While it might be tempting to think of a proposal from a Conservative that doesn't include adolescent pot shots at the Leader of the Opposition as refreshing, in reality this proposal from Bernier is nothing more than a dishonest appeal for radical free market capitalism and the dismantling of the modern healthcare system.