|
A
wild idea to shift power from Ottawa to the West by creating
a co-capital city
By
Roy MacGregor
Friday,
October 1, 2004
Page A2
The Globe and Mail
He calls
it "thinking outside the box." Others will say it should be
boxed up and buried in his backyard before some fool in government
starts running with it.
Ray
Argyle's idea is, to put it mildly, pretty wild.
A
House of Commons on the banks of the Bow River.
A Senate
sitting in a city where people expect senators to be fully
accountable.
The
governor-general in residence half the year, perhaps on Rideau
Ranch.
A
new National Capital Commission West that would promote the
sort of parks and museums and galleries that Ottawa has so
long enjoyed.
The
wholesale transfer of key federal departments -- Agriculture,
Energy, Indian Affairs, perhaps even Immigration -- to the
West.
An end,
forever, to the strains of western alienation, and a full
stop to any future fears of western separation.
"Look,"
Argyle said from Vancouver, where he is touring his wild notion
across the West, "all important ideas meet resistance when
they are first proposed.
"My
hope is simply to promote public debate." What Argyle, a political
veteran and media adviser who was born in Winnipeg during
the Depression, grew up in British Columbia and worked as
a journalist on the Prairies before finding his career in
Toronto, has done is write a book that he thinks can fix this
largely ungovernable country.
Turning
Points: The Campaigns that Changed Canada is 500 pages
on the 15 key federal elections that profoundly changed Canada.
One of those, Argyle says, is the election of June 28, 2004.
What
makes 2004 rank with previous elections that involved such
pivotal issues as war, free trade and sovereignty, Argyle
says, are Prime Minister Paul Martin's repeated statements
that he would consider his time in office a failure should
he not deal effectively with western alienation.
The
fact that Martin ended up with a minority government, Argyle
claims, only makes western concerns more pressing. The Liberals
need to reach out in that direction. And Opposition Leader
Stephen Harper, a western member of Parliament, has long demanded
that "the voice of the West" be heard.
Argyle
argues in favour of this happening, saying that Alberta now
stands with Ontario as a "have" province, and that five of
the six fastest-growing metropolitan areas, according to the
Conference Board, are found west of the Ontario-Manitoba border.
The
West, Argyle writes, "has matured economically, socially and
culturally, but has never secured the political means that
would allow it to equalize the role of the old Canada in shaping
our destiny in the 21st century. . . .
"The
next great step in Canadian nation-building now awaits us:
the shifting of power out of Ottawa and into the West by designating
a western city as a co-capital of Canada, equal to the old
capital in responsibility and authority." Argyle -- acting
somewhat as a modern-day Queen Victoria -- has scanned the
map and selected Calgary as his chosen co-capital of Canada.
He eliminated the four provincial capitals on the basis that
they already have a great deal of government, and while he
could have selected Vancouver or Saskatoon, he chose Calgary
for its growing economic clout and its strategic geographical
position in the West.
Holland,
he argues, shares its capital between Amsterdam and The Hague.
South
Africa has three capitals. Numerous U.S. presidents
have had what they call a "western White House." And, he adds,
even this old piece of North America once had twin capitals
when Montreal and Kingston were seats of government for Lower
and Upper Canada.
"The
West has said it wants in," Argyle writes near the end of
his book.
"That
aspiration will be met when a western city becomes a co-capital
of Canada along with Ottawa, equal but not separate ,
sharing the mechanisms of national government in the legislative,
executive and judicial spheres." Making such a move, he is
convinced, would trigger "a historic transformation" that
would do everything from strengthen unity to bringing a new
spirit of optimism to the country.
For
several days now, Argyle has been taking his argument across
the West, being welcomed on talk shows and talking to anyone
he meets about the reality of western alienation, which many
in the East believe is no reality at all.
"It's
absolutely visceral," counters the new author. "And it's widespread.
You hear it from a busboy in Vancouver. You hear it from your
cab driver in Edmonton. You hear it everywhere you go." What
is needed, he says, is an entirely new way of thinking about
not only how this country is governed, but where
it is governed.
"Something
like this," he says, "would bring bureaucrats and politicians
out of their Ottawa shell.
"And
it would counteract the north-south pull we all feel with
the United States. Let federal bureaucrats see what the West
is all about, and let Westerners see that there actually are
dedicated people working for Canada.
"It
would change the political culture of this country."
|
