Mark Carney faces the return of national unity politics

If it has been said that the first job of a Canadian prime minister is national unity, it was easier in recent years to forget.

Before this summer, it had been 30 years since a prime minister had to worry about a provincial referendum to secede. Before this week, it had been more than a decade since a prime minister was faced with a separatist government in Quebec. 

Justin Trudeau managed to get through a full nine years as prime minister without facing either. Mark Carney is now facing both.

Speaking in the House of Commons on Tuesday, in the wake of the Parti Québécois's victory in the Quebec election, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre posited that this confluence of events could be blamed on more than a decade of Liberal government in Ottawa.

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"Ten years ago there were no referendums in any part of the country to separate. There was no separatist movement in Alberta whatsoever, the PQ was defeated, the Bloc [Québécois] did not even have party status [in Parliament]," Poilievre said.

Correlation and causation are sometimes difficult to differentiate, but history is not quite as tidy as Poilievre remembers it. 

A survey conducted in July 2014 found that 23 per cent of Albertans believed their province would be better off as its own country — equal to the share of Albertans who were recently found to be in favour of a referendum on separation.

Support for secession in Quebec was broadly unchanged by Trudeau's years in power. And the last PQ government was in office from 2012 to 2014, when Stephen Harper was prime minister.

At the time, Harper seemed disinclined to despair.

"The people of Quebec voted for change, a pretty strong desire for change," Harper said after the Quebec election in 2012. "At the same time, I think it was pretty clear they were denying any kind of a mandate to pursue the separation of Quebec or the division of the country."

In 2012, while soft-pedalling the possibility of a referendum, the Parti Québécois won 54 seats with 32 per cent of the popular vote. This week, after campaigning on an explicit commitment to hold another referendum, the PQ won 59 seats with 28 per cent of vote. 

Carney could borrow Harper's 2012 analysis now — when Léger asked Quebecers in September to identify their most important issues, just nine per cent said "making Quebec a country."

The incoming premier, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, has also said a referendum won't be called while Donald Trump is president of the United States, putting off a possible vote on separation until at least 2029, before which Quebec could have another election. 

But this is not an unworrisome moment for those who believe in a united Canada.

Life in a large federation

The persistence of national unity concerns across Canadian history does not necessarily speak to some inherent flaw in the federation. Some level of desire for independence might be unavoidable in a large, diverse federation — according to a poll conducted by YouGov earlier this year, for instance, 18 per cent of Americans supported their state seceding from the United States, including 27 per cent of Californians and 24 per cent of Texans.

"The standard for success in a large federation like Canada is not the absence of tensions because you see it in all large federation," says André Pratte, the journalist and former senator who chaired the Quebec Liberal Party's policy commission ahead of this year's campaign.

"But I think the success of Canada is to have been able to manage those tensions in a peaceful manner, so that we can find arrangements and pathways to solutions."

But the price of Canadian federalism might be recurring vigilance. 

"In the case of Quebec, certainly, and I think probably it's the same for Alberta, there's no reason for panic," Pratte says, "but we should not be under any illusion that those things will simply go away if we just do nothing and hope that things will get better."

WATCH | Carney speaks to Quebec premier-designate:

Carney speaks to Quebec premier-designate, says they discussed ways to 'work together'

October 6|

Duration

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Support in Quebec for secession is relatively low, by historical standards, but it is also still far from non-existent.

"I will never take Canada for granted," says Stéphane Dion, the former intergovernmental affairs minister who spearheaded the Clarity Act in the wake of the last Quebec referendum. "I always think we need to make the point to speak for Canada."

Pratte recalls that the sovereignists did not seem to have much chance of winning when a referendum was called in 1995, only for the end result to be a razor-thin victory for the federalist side. Referendums, once called, can quickly take on a life of their own.

What should Carney do now?

Mark Carney is well regarded in Quebec, but he would be, Pratte notes, the first non-Quebecer to contend as prime minister with a referendum in the province. There are Quebecers in prominent positions around Carney, but the government needs to be organized to react "quickly and intelligently" to developments in Quebec as they arise, Pratte says.

Speaking with CBC's Power & Politics this week, Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said there are a number of things on which the federal and Quebec governments can collaborate — including housing and homelessness — and that right now Quebecers "don't want governments to be hassling about some theoretical scenario in two or three years from now."

But between now and 2029, there could be various points of friction — from federal plans for high-speed rail to the monarchy. In an op-ed for the National Post this week, Pratte wrote that one challenge for the Carney government will be distinguishing between issues on which Quebec has legitimate concerns and situations where the PQ government is "merely picking a fight for tactical reasons."

On immigration, Pratte suggests, the federal government may be able to offer reasonable responses to concerns in Quebec. In his own commentary on the election result in Quebec, Dion wrote that the Carney government should show that it is a "committed ally" in promoting and protecting the French language.

WATCH | What the PQ's return means:

At Issue | What the PQ's return means for Carney and Canada

October 8|

Duration

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During the Alberta referendum campaign, Carney has largely let his government's actions — namely a series of agreements with the Alberta government on energy and climate policy — speak for themselves. But when he does act, Dion says, it needs to be clear that he is not doing so simply to please or counter separatists.

"I think it must be clearer that what he has done on the pipeline and oil and energy is because he believes in it. He believes that Canada should be [an energy] superpower" Dion says. "If it's convincing some people in Alberta to believe in Canada, so be it. But it's not the main reason."

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It remains to be seen what ramifications might follow from Alberta's referendum. And it remains to be seen whether a PQ government might require something more or different from Carney and his government.

Writing in the introduction to Straight Talk, a collection of his writing and speeches on national unity published in 1999, Dion observed that, "our typically Canadian tendency of self-deprecation has often led us to belittle our debate on unity, seeing it as only a tiresome domestic fixation, of little interest to foreigners.

"In reality, we are facing an issue that may very well be the most crucial issue of the next century: how to maintain the unity of states made up of different populations."

If that is no less true now, it only adds to the burden on every Canadian prime minister.