SAINTS PRESERVE US

A Tale of Two Provinces

Where do I begin? Me, a twentieth century schizoid man living in an increasingly divided country. I lived in Quebec for 30 years. I was born there. Its politics ultimately drove me west. I’ve lived in Alberta for 30 years and a few hundred days. Its politics are driving me crazy.

Quebec politics are always insular intellectual exercises. There’s always an undercurrent of a sort of put-upon nationalism, a festering resentment of both history and modern times. No surprise then that the author of Quebec’s first draconian language legislation was a psychiatrist (New Brunswick is Canada’s only officially bilingual province although the entire country is officially bilingual, sort of). Around that time, during Montreal’s summer Olympics hangover and the rise of punk, a cabinet minister, a minor poet, was arrested for shoplifting. His transgression wasn’t a crime; his action was interpreted as a Quebecois cri de coeur because he tried to rip-off a Harris tweed sports jacket (English) from the Eaton’s department store (English) on Saint Catherine Street West (English). A later premier, a former colleague of the men mentioned above, a corpulent buffoon, was such an Anglophile that his speech was literally peppered with Oxford-y-morons: “By Jove!” He preferred brandy and cigarettes over ethnic groups.

Quebec is currently governed by the Coalition Avenir (future) Quebec (CAQ), a conservative populist political party that did not exist when I lived there. Alberta is currently governed by the United Conservative Party (UCP), a conservative populist political party that did not exist when I moved here. Alberta and Quebec are the feuding twins of the Canadian federation, born just 38 years apart, resentful of one another, and alienated from everybody else. They’re special. They say they “want to change the Constitution, well, you know…”

News from Quebec last week was more of the usual, and, as always, charmingly bizarre. Premier Francois Legault has convened a committee tasked with discovering why hockey is fading as his province’s major religion. La Sainte-Flanelle, the holy cloth, is moth-eaten, les Canadiens suck. The obvious solution is the firewagon élan of French-Canadian players – if only these young people would lace up their skates and make the National Hockey League (NHL, LNH in Quebec). Just a hunch, but I suspect his committee’s findings will allude to the grassroots expense of the sport and an ever-growing global talent pool. The game has grown as the league has bloated. Still, if the Canadiens drafted Quebeckers only, as they generally did when they held exclusive territorial rights to the province up until Canada’s 1967 centennial and the LNH’s great expansion which doubled the size of the loop, they couldn’t be any worse than they are now.

Just to be clear: Universite de Montreal offers a comparative theology course centred on the worship of the Montreal Canadiens. Though there can never be an exact flashpoint in time, historians usually date the conflagration of Quebec Nationalism with the Richard hockey riot of 1955. NHL President Clarence Campbell (English) suspended the Rocket (French) during the playoffs (very bad). The greatest children’s book ever published in this country is The Hockey Sweater by Roch Carrier. Possibly the greatest animated short ever produced by Canada’s National Film Board is The Hockey Sweater. The plot is very simple. Mister Eaton (English) via his mail-order catalogue mistakenly sends a Toronto Maple Leafs sweater (Protestant and very English) to a boy in rural Quebec. The boy’s teammates, opponents and the priest refereeing his outdoor hockey games are not impressed. The boy goes to church (Catholic) and prays to God for a million moths to eat his new blue sweater (wool).

(Carrier’s Our Life with The Rocket is one of those delightful books that belong in every library if only because it defies classification. Between the boards it rates with The Game (Dryden) and The Game of Our Lives (Gzowsky). It is a novel approach to a twinning of biography and memoir, even in translation. My copy is shelved proximate to a history of Canada, some works by Leonard Cohen, a history of the fur trade and a biography of Samuel de Champlain.)

Once Albertans elected the UCP in 2019, Premier Jason Kenney convened a committee tasked with exposing the shadowy global forces conspiring to bring Alberta’s energy industry to its knees. This think tank of coyotes is not to be confused with the UCP government’s Canadian Energy Centre (CEC), a “war room” birthed to spin pro-fossil fuel propaganda. Anyway, its final report was released a month or so ago, a year late and a million dollars over budget. The gist of it was that Alberta had run smack into the niggling inconvenience of free speech and modern times; Mother Nature’s sons are gunning for everyone.

The UCP last weekend held its annual general meeting. Fittingly, the venue was a casino. Economic indicators suggest the coal-black marble spinning on Alberta’s boom-and-bust roulette wheel, crafted in 1947 at Leduc No. 1, is teetering over the black after seven years in the red. Demand for natural gas and oil has risen as have the prices of those commodities. Shadowy global forces work in mysterious ways. Weirdly, this increasingly good news may prove to be something of a mixed blessing for Premier Kenney.

Quebec has always been governed by a culture of complaint. Confederation being relative, Alberta is just finding her voice, learning to whine. The big national snit regards the nature of federal transfer payments. Various levels of government in Canada oversee various jurisdictions. Foreign policy is left to Ottawa; education and health care are left to regional capitals like Quebec City or Edmonton. Transfer payments are federal monies apportioned amongst the country’s ten provinces and three territories. The current distribution formula is complex and was crafted in part by Premier Kenney during his tenure as a federal cabinet minister. The national dole is intended to ensure citizens, no matter where they live, are able to receive a base level of services. Wealthier provinces don’t require handouts. Quebeckers consider transfer payments from Ottawa a birthright. Premier Kenney has convinced many Albertans that federal accountants simply walk into his provincial treasury and give all those shrinking petro-dollars to Quebec. It’s a compelling fallacy because the biggest problems in Quebec at the moment are: the fragile state of the mother tongue, the nature and role of religious symbols in a newly secularized society, and hockey (which I suppose includes both of the above).

Premier Kenney faces other challenges. The Wildrose Party did not exist when I moved to Alberta nor does it exist now. It flared like a gas well fire for a time, the result of a schism in the traditional Tory establishment; the Progressive Conservative Party was just, well, too darned progressive. Brian Jean, its former leader and former federal cabinet colleague of Premier Kenney’s, has emerged creature-like from the tar sands tailings ponds up north near Fort McMurray. He wants the UCP nomination for his riding and he’s gunning for Premier Kenney’s job. And he has allies. There will be a UCP leadership review in April 2022 and Albertans will go to the polls in 2023.

When Jason Kenney formed the UCP from the dregs of Alberta’s conservative cohort, he politically euthanized Brian Jean. Though Premier Kenney is utterly bereft of any quality suggesting leadership ability, there are few better backroom operators. Yet somehow, Brian Jean has managed to sit up in his coffin, a dream come true for Alberta’s left of centre New Democratic Party (NDP) and the official opposition in the legislature: “Please God, let that primordial beast crawl through the firebreak surrounding ‘Fort Mac’ and slither down ‘Highway of Death’ (a busy single lane for all types of heavy traffic through boreal forest) into our capital city.” At the casino last weekend, incoming UCP president Cynthia Moore (no relation) handed out “UCP United” buttons, a bad portent although her acronym usage reads better than “United Conservative Party United.” When unity is perceived as a concern it’s because there isn’t any.

Perhaps this week Premier Kenney shares a resentful if grudging kinship with Premier Legault? Any talk of the right wing is best confined to hockey.  

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of Canadian political commentary since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is available. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer.