Governing from the centre

In the last 40 years, federal governments have, broadly speaking, alternated between two approaches to federalism. Under Trudeau and Chrétien, we had what I would call 'muscular' federalism. Under Mulroney, Martin and Harper, we had (and have) 'compliant' federalism. Muscular federalism assumes that the federal government speaks for Canada as a whole and asserts its prerogatives (political and legal) against the provinces. Compliant federalism assumes that the provinces are more legitimate spokesmen for the people, being closer to them, and thus that the federal government should defer to them in defining the scope and nature of canadian federalism.

Despite being the subject of highly visible populist screeds in the West and nationalist calumny in Québec, 'muscular' federalism results in more popular, more stable federal governments. No one has ever been more effective at convincing Quebeckers to stay in Canada than the 'arrogant' and 'centralizing' Trudeau. In more recent times, separatism reached its lowest ebb after Chrétien and Dion unleashed Plan B and Clarity act. (And if it wasn't for the NEP, an avoidable yet catastrophic lapse in political judgment, the Liberals would still be a force to be reckoned with in the West).

For this federation to be stable, you need a federal prime minister who believes in his own legitimacy and is willing to set it against that of the premiers. Despite the fact that provincialist leaders like Williams and Bouchard are sometimes highly popular, there is no relationship between their popularity and the electoral viability of muscular federalism.

This is, ultimately, why the Conservatives govern badly, at least from the standpoint of the practice of federalism. They believe in smaller government, and thus instinctively believe that the central government should be as weak as possible. But in practice, in Canada, a weak central government creates an unstable dynamic in which, paradoxically, the provinces take more and more and the federal government becomes less and less legitimate.