Harper's Neo Federalism

"Withdraw from the Canada Pension Plan... Collect our own revenue from personal income tax... Resume provincial responsibility for health-care policy. If Ottawa objects to provincial policy, fight in the courts... [E]ach province should raise its own revenue for health... It is imperative to take the initiative, to build firewalls around Alberta... "


Stephen Harper in an "Open letter to Ralph Klein," January 24th 2001.

And today we read that the intentions outlined in that letter are about to become a national project. Evidently Harper doesn't hate all national projects.

In what's become typical for Bell Globe Media they fail to mention that should such a Constitutional amendment be written any federal program already in place could quite straightforwardly be offloaded to the provinces. Such as, for example, national health care, as Harper has noted above. He would finally be able to achieve the originating goal of the National Citizens Coalition - I guess that one stayed with him all these years. Just as Tom Flanagan's goal of sharply curtailing support for First Nations has stayed with him.

Slowly chipping away, stone, by stone, until, Canada more closely resembles Texas than the country we grew up in.