A few links for those with an interest in goings-on in Canuckistan. Peaktalk is disappointed that the Conservatives have moved to the left on health care, thus forestalling a much-needed national debate on Canada’s health care system. Meanwhile, Collin May of Innocents Abroad is pretty much flooding the zone with current poll results and analysis; barring a major reversal in the next 3 weeks, it’s looking more and more like the Tories will win a plurality and be able to form a government with the support of the Bloc Québecois (as outlined here)—inspired debate or no.

Also of potential interest (and joining the blogroll, at least through the end of the month): Alexandra Taylor, who comes recommended by Colby Cosh, and Points of Information, a group blog recommended by Alexandra.

Pieter Dorsman has decided to start blogging again at Peaktalk. He returns with a sage philosophy of blogging:

So is Peaktalk back? Yes, I think so, tentatively. But with a slightly different approach. Content when I feel like it and when I have something to say, or when there’s really good stuff to link to. No more compulsion or posting for posting’s sake.

When blogging starts to feel like a chore, that means it’s time to take a break. Just remember to follow Pieter’s example and come back to us after a while ☺.

Oh, and Pieter—no pressure, but I’d love to hear your take on that minor skirmish going on north of the 49th parallel.

Well, the big election north of the border is finally on, after months of buildup. Matt Yglesias has an ongoing discussion in his comments; I generally agree that it’s the Liberals’ election to lose, and the structural features of Canadian politics favor the Liberals emerging as the largest party—even if they don’t receive an absolute majority of the 308 seats up for grabs. There is widespread disaffection with the Liberals—in part due to several financial fiascos, in part because neither current prime minister Paul Martin nor ex-premier Jean Chrétien had a large fan club to begin with, but that’s unlikely to translate into a plurality win for the new Conservative Party of Canada, and the largest party is almost certain to be the one invited by the governor-general to form a government.

Realistically, there are about five possible governments that could emerge:

• A majority Liberal government. If you’ve got money to wager, this is the odds-on favorite, even with the horrible approval ratings the Liberals have. Requires an outright majority (155+ seats).
• A Liberal-New Democratic Party coalition. The problem with this arrangement is that Martin is trying to move the Liberals to the right and repair relations with the United States; the NDP is populated by hardcore leftists and harbors strongly anti-American sentiments, which would radically complicate Martin’s attempts at rapproachment. Realistically only likely if the Liberals win below 150 seats, but still have a plurality.
• A minority Liberal government, depending on floating support on individual pieces of legislation. Probably unstable over the long term, but more politically palatable than a Liberal-NDP coalition, and increasingly likely if the Liberals are very close to a majority (say 150–154 seats).
• A (probably short-term) Conservative-Bloc Québecois government. Both parties favor devolution of power from the federal government to the provinces, and a short-term agenda focusing on these issues—increased provincial autonomy, reform of the Senate to make it an elected body—might be palatable. In the long term, though, the contrast between the Canadian nationalist Conservatives and the Québecois nationalist Bloc along with the contrast between Conservative laissez-faire economics and BQ social democracy, would force new elections—but ones where both parties would be institutionally advantaged due to an elected upper chamber acting as a check on the (presumably Liberal) new government.

Anyway, this one will be fascinating to watch, and—thankfully—it’ll all be over in about a month, unlike the slow-motion trainwreck on this side of the border.

White House “drug czar” John Walters blamed Canada for a doubling of “pot-related emergency room cases,” explaining that hydroponically-grown Canadian pot is “seven times more potent than the marijuana baby-boomer parents may remember.”

“Canada is exporting to us the crack of marijuana and it is a dangerous problem,” said Walters.

Colby Cosh ponders whether or not the new Conservative Party north of the border is properly thought of as “Tory.” Colby notes the key problem:

The problem is that by equating “Conservative” with “Tory” we basically discard the useful 20th-century concept of a “Tory” as someone who is Anglophile, monarchist, elitist, ceremony-loving, truly conservative about certain institutions, and committed to property and the existing class order.

Canadian Conservatives, he argues, haven’t really been “Tories” since John Diefenbaker’s rule in the 1950s, and, indeed, the new “Conservative Party” is even further from the Tory ideal. Of course, arguably, it’s not even conservative any more, at least in the sense of defending the established Trudeauian order. Neither are the Liberals very liberal, for that matter, except when it comes to spending taxpayers’ money on boondoggles like the $1 billlion CDN national gun registry.

Obsidian Winger Katherine R has been all over the Maher Arar case for the past couple of weeks; today she notes Juliet O’Neill’s reporting on the case, which has landed Ms. O’Neill under investigation by Canadian authorities. This report reinforces my previous suspicion that the whole situation was orchestrated from Ottawa, with U.S. authorities playing an important role of being all-too-willing to go along in making the dirty work happen. It’s clear Ottawa couldn’t have deported Arar to Syria themselves without there being domestic hell to pay—so they got us to do it for them.

Bottom line: I’m with Katherine on this: there need to be investigations on both sides of the border.

Both David Janes and Pieter Dorsman have interesting posts on the case of Maher Arar, a citizen of Canada and Syria who was detained in New York on his way back to Canada from a trip to Tunisia. Arar was subsequently deported to Syria, jailed, and released, according to this CBC timeline. Katherine R, one of the bloggers at Obsidian Wings, has also been dissecting the story for a few days now (more here).

I honestly don’t know what to make of all of this. I have a sneaking suspicion that elements of the Canadian intelligence apparatus were trying to get the U.S. to do some of their dirty work for them, because the Canadian government would never let them get away with it on their own, but there’s also the distinct possibility that U.S. authorities were freelancing. It’s all deeply weird.

Pieter Dorsman of Peaktalk wonders if the United States might be following the path of Canada and the Netherlands, with both the left and the right in those countries becoming disaffected with the centrists who held sway in the 1990s. Definitely a good read. (Digression follows…)

Note to potential presidential candidates: don’t go on obscure Canadian political panel shows—your comments may return from the past to bite you in the ass.

Link via Matt Stinson.

Alec Saunders notes that the Canadian Alliance has had a bit of a bigot eruption, courtesy of one of its members of Parliament, Larry Spencer, who wants to make homosexuality illegal. Priceless quote from the National Post account:

But Mr. Spencer said any MP, and especially someone from his party, risks being labelled “a redneck or a hate-monger or homophobic” if they even mention such views in Parliament.

Let me see: you want to make homosexuality illegal. That sounds, I dunno, pretty “homophobic” to me. But then we get to the Globe and Mail’s story on the aftermath, which contains this gem of a juxtaposition, discussing the implications on the merger between the Alliance and Progressive Conservatives:

One of [the Progressive Conservative] MPs, Scott Brison, is gay, and has expressed interest in running for the leadership of the new party.

Mr. Brison said Mr. Harper has a responsibility to remove Mr. Spencer outright from the party for his “outrageous” remarks. …

“… It is absolutely essential that we actually be inclusive by not tolerating bigotry, prejudice and hatred,” the MP said.

Left unsaid is exactly how “removing Mr. Spencer,” and presumably those who share his views, makes the party more inclusive. Wouldn’t that actually make it, by definition, less inclusive?

David Janes has the latest go-round on this story, featuring debate between Colby Cosh (also in the National Post) and Mark Wickens; David’s reaction seems spot-on:

Larry Spencer isn't some ol' codger holding court at the red-and-white pole barber shop, he's a member of Parliament. And whatever the mode of his internal dialogue, whether it be based the 1970's or the 1870's, he correspondingly should consider exercising his internal censor occasionally too. Everyone has nasty thoughts, but most realize that there are levels of frankness aren't particularly refreshing.

Alec Saunders sides with Janes and Wickens over Cosh, too. And, there's more from Damian Penny, who notes that the National Post has apparently unearthed the source of Spencer’s anti-gay rhetoric.

Colby Cosh plays Excel number-cruncher and takes a look at the likely electoral impact of the merger between the Progressive Conservatives and Alliance north of the border. The raw math suggests the new party be able might deprive the Liberals of an overall majority in Parliament (though probably not by enough for the Conservatives to form a government), on the basis of the support for its candidates in past elections when they ran as members of separate parties. Of course, there’s still a campaign to be run, which no doubt will affect the numbers substantially.

One of Karl Marx’s most famous aphorisms is that capitalism would eventually collapse due to its own internal contradictions. While old Karl wasn’t a very good prescriptivist (ask the Russians or the Chinese), he did come up with a useful coinage. And, today, Pieter Dorsman of Peaktalk takes up that theme in discussing the future of Canada, on the day that the leaders of Alberta and British Columbia signed an agreement on interprovincial cooperation that might be the precursor of a secessionist movement in the Canadian West. One telling reason why the provinces might cooperate:

Almost one-quarter of Canada’s population lives in the two provinces. In 2002, Alberta and B.C. produced $300-billion worth of goods and services, one-third of the national total.

In other words, the per-capita contribution to national GDP of Alberta and British Columbia is 50 percent higher than that of the rest of Canada. And now, these provinces face serious damage to that economic power in the form of Ottawa’s insistence on ratifying the Kyoto accord, which will undercut their advantages in natural resource production.

One is reminded of the situation of the American South prior to the Civil War. To say it was about slavery is both true and to miss the point; the abolition of slavery would have severely damaged the economies of the Southern states, and the leaders of the southern states saw no alternative for preserving their economies but secession. They gravely miscalculated in thinking that the rest of the country would accept that, and quite clearly were wrong to have adopted slavery as the basis of their economies in the first place, but to them secession was preferable to economic collapse.

Is this analogy perfect? Not really. Canada’s central government doesn’t have the military power to prevent secession, and probably wouldn’t be permitted by its Supreme Court (or, more likely, by the United States) to use it even if it did, and the global warming issue is not as morally unambiguous as slavery. But the fundamental lesson—that preserving a region’s economic strength may be a cause for secession—is still valid.

Colby Cosh doesn’t quite ask a question worth considering:

It’s clear enough that a majority of the Liberal caucus is opposed, right or wrong, to gay marriage in principle. The same could probably be said of the Opposition; yet we’re to have gay marriage in Canada all the same. It does make you wonder what the point of sending MPs to Ottawa is.

Or, for my non-comparatively-inclined friends, a hypothetical translation into the American political context:

It’s clear enough that a majority of Democrats are opposed, right or wrong, to gay marriage in principle. The same could probably be said of the Republicans; yet we’re to have gay marriage in the United States all the same. It does make you wonder what the point of sending Congressmen to Washington is.

Alec Saunders, on the other hand, doesn’t think gay marriage is a legitimate subject of political debate; the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada’s equivalent to the U.S. Bill of Rights (plus a healthy dollop of the 14th Amendment, minus those pesky 2nd and 3rd amendments that were at least partially motivated by anti-British sentiment), has spoken—or at least been interpreted by the Supreme Court of Canada to speak in that way.

What’s interesting to me is that Alec’s a self-identified “traditional conservative” while Colby is generally libertarian in his outlook, yet they take the opposite sides on this issue to those you’d expect Americans with those political leanings to take. (Incidentally, my position is closer to Alec’s, simply because legislative bodies are at their worst when enacting social and economic regulation; the “Do Something” instinct too often prevails over common sense in these cases.)

In Colby’s case, I might explain his preference for legislative involvement as vestigial sentiment for the idea of parliamentary sovereignty—the idea that the final arbiter of the Law is the legislature, as is embodied in Westminster parliamentary tradition. But I find Alec’s position a bit more perplexing, although I can perhaps understand his disinterest in the use of this particular issue by the embryonic Alliance of Progressive Conservatives (or whatever the hell they decide to call themselves). God knows I cringe every time the Republicans pull the same stunts, although in Mississippi the Democrats usually join in the fun too, so here it’s essentially a wash.

Then again, the Smug Canadian reads Colby’s comments differently. So what do I know?

My copy of Virginia Postrel’s new book, The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness, had shown up in a box on my chair by the time I got to work this morning. I’ve only gotten through the Preface, but it’s been a good read so far. (I would have sat down at one of those nice new tables they have on the rear porch of Weir Hall and read some more, but a half-dozen other people had the same idea I had. They weren’t reading Virginia’s book, though.)

I also watched a bit of the CBC news on Newsworld International this morning—a rerun of last night’s National, with Peter Mansbridge looking appropriately dour, as always. Apparently the Alliance and Progressive Conservatives, Canada’s two main parties of the right, are making another run at a merged organization, tentatively to be named the Conservative Party. I’m not sure that it will fly. The PCs seem to me like warmed over British “one nation” Tories, while the Alliance seem more like the Texas GOP minus the libertarian instincts. More importantly, the Liberals are positioned to capture the median voter in Ontario and Quebec, which is where the votes are anyway under Canada’s system of not-quite-proportional allocation of seats in Parliament. So even if they pull off the grand alliance, I’m not sure it solves much in the long run. (Then again, I’ve been half-expecting Canada to collapse due to its own internal contradictions for the past decade. Of course, states with even less reason to exist, like Belgium, have persisted as well. Blame the Treaty of Westphalia.)

I also learned that a tenth dwarf was added to the presidential race on the Democratic side down here, some guy from Arkansas who apparently is a lot like Howard Dean but spends more time hanging out with war criminals (the latter part I learned from Matthew; Peter didn’t mention that part).

But that story got less play than news that (a) everyone in the media and Parliament is now treating Paul Martin like he’s the prime minister, instead of Jean Chrétien, and (b) Canada’s opening seven more consulates in the United States next year. Amazingly they’ve just gotten around to adding Houston, the fourth-largest city in the United States. Apparently they’re also opening up in a place called “Raleigh-Durham,” which I was under the impression were actually two distinct cities. Then again, so once were Buda and Pest. Or, for that matter, Toronto and Etobicoke.

JerkSauce helpfully passes on word that Canada now has more proven oil reserves than Iraq.

To commemorate this event, I have an announcement for my friends at IndyMedia: the Straussian neoconservative cabal has a new slogan: 89-30 or bust!

Actually, I think we’ll just wait for the Albertans to secede. Much cheaper than sending a few H2’s with TOW launchers on top across the Montana frontier.

Alec Saunders is upset that U.S. drug czar John Walters has been making veiled—in the sense that something stated blatantly can be called “veiled”—threats about Canadian plans to decriminalize possession of small quantities of marijuana. (I’m too kind to make jokes about this perhaps explaining Jean Chrétien’s behavior on the world stage, except I’d be more likely to blame it on crack cocaine.)

Over the past decade I’ve come to the conclusion that the drug czar post makes its occupants into complete imbeciles. It turned Bill Bennett into a compulsive gambler, Barry McCaffrey into a national joke, and John Walters into a lame ripoff of Marlon Brando in The Godfather. Now Canucks can join in the fun of ridiculing the office. It’s the drug czar’s world, we’re all just living in it…

On a related note, Dean Esmay wonders why America can’t have a rational debate on drug policy. Me too.

Ottawa’s ignoring one of Canada’s most important provinces, yet there’s not much of a succession movement there, at least not yet. More on Alberta’s perpetual screwing by Her Majesty’s Government is at Colby Cosh’s place, which links to this rather interesting article in The Hill Times (Roll Call à la Canadienne) by a Clinton-era diplomat from the U.S. to Canada. Here’s just a sampling:

From a U.S. perspective, one puzzles over the durability of Canadian unity in the West, and more specifically its attraction for Alberta. A Canadian political maxim has emphasized the patriotic commitment of Western Canadians to Canada, but it appears to be more based in residual sentiment of history than in 21st century logic. Just what is in it for Alberta? What does “Canada” supply that Alberta does not already have or could not supply for itself?

And how do Alberta’s elected leaders get treated by Ottawa?

In Ralph Klein, Ottawa has the most Canada-centric premier Alberta is ever likely to elect. And Ottawa treats him as if he is some inebriated oaf with oil-stained jeans.

The root of the problem?

As long as the Canadian political structure provides only for “rep by pop,” the West would have to have population levels equivalent to Ontario and Quebec to modify the current socio-economic agenda. If, as some Liberals have tongue-in-cheek suggested, Alberta should elect more Liberals, it would still be meaningless. Alberta’s delegation could be 100 per cent Liberals—and still its interests would take a back seat to those of Ontario and Quebec.

I suspect there’s a lesson in here for those Americans who want to abolish the Senate and get rid of the Electoral College. I’ll leave figuring that out as an exercise for the reader.

The phenomenon of “fisking” has obviously reached the mainstream: it’s been employed successfully on page A8 of today’s edition of The Globe and Mail. The fisk-ee? None other than Toronto mayor Mel Lastman, apparently upset about Toronto’s role as the North American SARS capital.

That—in an interview with CNN’s bumbling Aaron Brown, perhaps better known as “ratings poison” or “the poor man’s Charlie Rose,” no less—Lastman came out the lesser is yet another strike against this walking argument against municipal consolidation (and for the Peter Principle).

Via Alec Saunders.

Colby Cosh notes today that secession is the underlying threat being made by leading Alberta politicians as part of an aggressive effort to repatriate more powers from Ottawa, following the lead of on-and-off secessionist Québec. With many in the province upset with the Liberal Chrétien government’s hamfisted approach to, well, virtually everything (including energy policy, a particular concern in Alberta), this is something that people with an interest in Canadian politics should definitely keep an eye on.

In my never-ending quest to confuse readers by blogging about Canadian politics, I present the news (via Pieter) that New York Governor George Pataki and Ontario Premier Ernie Eves have called for a security perimeter encompassing the U.S. and Canada, to streamline border controls between the two countries.

The report comes fresh on the heels of poll results suggesting 65%* of Canadians favor the idea of a security perimeter; in the same poll, 73% also favor tougher immigration policies.

Perhaps the more interesting pattern of this story: Google News finds that both the Toronto Star and Globe and Mail in Canada give it play, while among U.S. papers, only the Buffalo News, the Ithaca Journal, and a minor New York-based paper appear to have picked up the news.

* Poll conducted April 4–6, n=500, margin of error ± 4.5% with a 95% confidence level.

Colby Cosh helpfully clarifies the Canadian government’s position on the Iraq conflict. It turns out that Paul Cellucci was simultaneously right and wrong to criticize Canada for their lack of support…

Some remarks made by Paul Cellucci, the U.S. ambassador to Canada, during a visit to Toronto on Tuesday are causing quite a stir on both sides of the border. His speech to the Economic Club of Toronto raised hackles in Ottawa due to his criticism of the Chrétien government’s stance on the War in Iraq, while his responses to the media after the speech have caused a stir south of the border in the lefty and centrist wing of the blogosphere. According to The Globe and Mail, Cellucci said:

Mr. Cellucci said the relationship between the two countries will endure in the long term, but “there may be short-term strains here.”

Asked what those strains would be, Mr. Cellucci replied, “You’ll have to wait and see.” But he cryptically added it is his government’s position that “security will trump trade,” implying possible implications for cross-border traffic.

Dan Drezner’s critique is reasonable, although I think he (along with Jacob T. Levy, Henry Farrell, Matthew Yglesias, and Kevin Drum of CalPundit) may be reading too much into an off-hand comment; a presidential administration has limited control over what annoyed members of Congress might attach to an appropriations bill, nor can it really control the effects of a grassroots economic boycott. And, like it or not, administration policy is that “security will trump trade”; it certainly trumps all sorts of other things, as both the War on Drugs and PATRIOT Act have proven.

On the other hand, others have different perspectives: Pieter Dorsman of Peaktalk believes that Cellucci was delivering a much-needed wakeup call to Canada’s political and business elite, Mike Watkins thinks it’s a good thing that Cellucci brought the issues of anti-Americanism and anti-Canadianism to the forefront (and notes a generational divide within his half-American, half-Canadian family), Tim G. in Toronto thinks Cellucci wasn’t nearly blunt enough, and Laurent seems to think (my French is a tad rusty) that it’s a big dustup over nothing: « le commerce prévaut sur la politique étrangère » (trade prevails over foreign politics).

As I’ve mentioned before, the Chrétien government has missed the boat on the “secure perimeter”; although Canada would have had to reform its asylum and immigration procedures somewhat to secure American agreement, the economic benefits of a Schengen-style union with an open border would greatly outweigh the loss of sovereignty associated with the arrangement (as in the case of NAFTA). As Cellucci discusses in the speech, there is increased coordination between Immigration Canada and the U.S. INS, but it’s a lot more hassle than would be necessary if both the U.S. and Canada could come to a common agreement on visa and asylum policy. Chrétien made this bed, and now he has to lie in it.

More perspectives via Feedster; Alec Saunders has a good roundup of Canadian reaction.

Jacob has just posted an update, including an email from a Canadian civil servant. There's one telling quote:

As a side note, I wonder if part of the problem in relations is that Bush's administration pays more attention to what other leaders say for domestic consumption than past administrations. There's some evidence that he's more aware of other leaders playing up anti-Americanism in their home countries than any other President before him; at the minimum, he is more bothered by it.

I think this is largely reflective of how Bush 43 deals with the world; since other countries’ leaders think nothing of using remarks he makes for domestic consumption (including everyone’s favorite bug-bears like the International Criminal Court and Kyoto, where his substantive policy is the same as Bill Clinton’s) against him, he feels entitled to do the same to them.

Dan Simon (found via Jacob) comments at length as well; the most important paragraph:

The real issue—the one about which Cellucci issued his veiled threat—is that of “homeland security”. For various reasons, the Canadian government has at times dragged its feet in dealing with terrorist groups, with the result that Canada has come to be viewed as something of a haven, and even a staging ground, for anti-US terorist cells. (Recall that Ahmed Ressam was caught importing bombing materials across the border from Canada in 1999.) As long as the border between the US and Canada remains wide open, American border security is in practice no tighter than Canadian border security, and Canada's generous immigration laws and occasionally lax attitude towards certain violent groups is thus of direct concern to US officials. Hence Cellucci's remark that “[f]or Canada the priority is trade, for us the priority is security….Security trumps trade.”

I think Dan’s hit the nail on the head.

The new blog PeakTalk is the weblog of an expat living in western Canada. He's got a great post on the failure of Jean Chrétien and the Liberals to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their biggest trading partner and military protector. As he says:

If you still believe, in spite of the all strong arguments noted above, that after 12 years of arguments and sanctions it is not right to attack Iraq, you may very well make that point, but you lose all credibility if you fail to support your closest friends that are willing to stand up to the source of evil that is confronting the world. With American, British and Australian soldiers likely to die in the next few days, the least you could do as a friend and ally is to express some level of support to your friends and especially to your closest neighbor who also happens to be your major customer, in this case buying 85% of everything that you export abroad. And not only that, that southern neighbor also provides for your security as you have miserably neglected to do anything about your own defense and you have indicated a considerable degree of unwillingness to integrate security arrangements for a North American perimeter that might have benefited the security of your and your neighbor's citizens. The legacy of Prime Minister Chrétien is that he has relegated the status of a once powerful nation like Canada to that of a completely irrelevant bystander that even in times of acute danger can not bring itself to support those that are willing to contain the danger and are taking on the dirty work.

There's lots more. In particular, the failure of the Chrétien government to cooperate in creating a so-called “secure perimeter” has been a remarkably short-sighted development that has set back the development of NAFTA and stalled the integration of the North American economy, hurting economic growth in both the United States and Canada.

In terms of Canadian domestic politics, I am not as confident as PeakTalk that this will undermine the Liberal government. Due to the highly fractured nature of Canadian politics, it is hard to imagine any credible alternative to the Liberals emerging in the short term, at least until the Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservatives (Tories) come to some sort of arrangement and are able to campaign effectively in Ontario. On the other hand, far stranger things have happened in Canadian politics—the wipe-out of the Tories in 1993, for example—and after a decade in office, Chrétien is overdue for being turfed out onto the street.

Christopher Johnson of the Midwest Conservative Journal notes the recent use of the “S word” — secession — by Alberta premier Ralph Klein. Christopher's analysis seems spot-on:

Assuming British Columbia decided to stay put, could Alberta go it alone? It would be difficult; Alberta would have no port facilities and would have to arrange something with Vancouver or get real chummy with Seattle. But independence would not be impossible. Money would not be a problem; the United States would quite happily buy as much Albertan oil as Edmonton was willing to sell and its transport south could be facilitated with as much American capital as Alberta desired.

Would Alberta become the 51st American state? It probably wouldn't have to. Relations between Alberta and states like Montana and Idaho would be extremely intimate regardless of what Washington thought about it. Indeed, an independent Alberta or Western Canada would be a powerful attraction to many western American states during their periodic outbreaks of anti-Washingtonism. Theoretically, Edmonton could have all the benefits of close association with the United States without the burden of bureaucratic oversight from Washington.

As a practical matter, an independent Western Canada (or just Alberta on its own) would probably be a more functional solution for post-breakup Alberta: there would be no need to conform legal systems, or interminable debate about whether a parliamentary legislature is compatible with the Constitution's guarantee of a republican form of government. Unlike Québec, Alberta is a net financial contributor to Canada's federal government, so financing the needs fulfilled by Ottawa would not be difficult (although disentanglement with the rump Canada might lead to some short-term problems).

Should they do it? Beats me. But it would probably be less painful than even the dissolution of Czechoslovakia, generally regarded as the most amicable national divorce on record, and clearly a lot of Albertans are fed up with their isolation from, and lack of input to, federal decision-making.

Colby Cosh discusses a UPI article by James C. Bennett; apparently, secessionist sentiment is running high in "Canada's Texas." Alberta (unlike Quebec) is a huge net contributor to Canada's federal budget; due to the nature of Canada's power-sharing, most services are provided by the provinces through funds redistributed by the national government via block grants.

One of the ironies of Canada is that its constitution, the British North America Act of 1867, was specifically designed to forestall the secessionist problems embodied in the United States (who, after all, had just come out of a bloody civil war that at least in part was over the relative powers of the state and national governments). However, the division of responsibility embodied in the BNA Act has led to a political environment where the provinces have much more sway over Canada's national policies than states do in the United States.