The “Government In Waiting” is off to a slow start. The parliamentary session has not even begun for the fall, and already the major issue isn’t any oversight of the government, it is a dispute over their own new chosen interim leader.
NDP supporters are up in arms defending their leader. That is to be expected. What surprises me, however, is this ardent messaging coming from Team Orange insisting that their leader is a superhero federalist. Such is her lifelong commitment to Canada’s strong national government that she recently returned her memberships from two different separatist political parties, you see. Now she is only an NDPer, and the NDP is a federalist party, so they will tell you.
It really makes me wonder, what is our test for applying the “federalist” label to a political figure? For a long time now the term as come to mean “not Gilles Duceppe or Lucien Bouchard,” but that is a very low standard. Certainly someone who has no interest in federalism but also has no interest in Quebec nationalism cannot be called a federalist for instance. So I got to thinking I should come up with a list of statements describing a “federalist” that we might apply to the new leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition:
1. A federalist is anyone who is a member of fewer than three separatist political parties.
2. A federalist is anyone who is a member of a separatist political party, but only joined up to support their friends, who are separatists, while not necessarily being a separatist themselves.
3. A federalist is anyone who is embarrassed by the national media commenting on their memberships in certain political parties and changes the status of those memberships as a consequence of that coverage.
4. A federalist is anyone who insists they are a federalist, since nobody knows what a federalist is anymore anyhow.
5. A federalist is anyone in Canadian politics, since attacking someone for being a separatist is obviously political harassment according to John Baglow, and we Canadians are just too polite for that.
6. A federalist is anyone who is a member of one or more separatist political parties, but keeps it a secret.
7. A federalist is anyone who is a “rookie” on a “steep learning curve” having their “baptism by fire” who, for whatever reason, is leader of the opposition but still not subject to the same high standards we usually ascribe to the person who holds that position.
8. A federalist is a member of the NDP, a party whose caucuse loudly advocates for entrenched legal rights to reflect the status of the new Quebec Nation and a new bill to give Bill-101 jurisdiction over federal workplaces in Quebec, superseding the Official Languages Act, which isn’t important to the federalist position at all.
9. A federalist is someone you know, who you like, and you think calling them a “federalist” is the only kind thing to do.
10. A federalist is someone who didn’t personally fight with General Frontenac at the Battle of Quebec.
If any of those definitions are any good (and they’re not), then it is crystal clear to me that Nycole Turmel, PC (has she been induced into the Queen’s Privy Council for Canada yet?) is a federalist. Otherwise, I think the onus is on her to explain, in great detail, what her position is on the future of Canadian federalism, language policy, the Clarity Act, and a variety of other issues which generally divide people into two camps, federalist and not. The explanation she gave, that she will agree to give up membership in other parties and that she is not a separatist, does nothing to establish her credentials as an actual federalist. To do so stretches the meaning of an important word.
I leave it to you, therefore, gentle readers. What is a federalist to you? Is it easy to become a federalist? And if Nycole Turmel gives the great speech about a united Canada and a strong federal power, will you be more likely to believe her contention that she is an advocate of the central government, national unity, and two official languages – no matter if she joined the Bloc Quebecois?
The speech is one I would desperately like to hear. Firstly, I would like to agree with my friend Mr. Baglow, and I hope he is correct that Ms. Turmel is in fact not a separatist. Secondly, a long public speech by the NDP interim leader on the importance of Ottawa would destroy the success they saw in Quebec this last election, where they worked so diligently to court the “Yes” vote. That was a brilliant strategy too, for a federalist party.
