Four days before the latest test of this 159-year-old Confederation — a nation that has given the world both insulin and Céline Dion — Mark Carney went to Calgary to make the case for carrying on.
“Canada isn’t perfect, but we are the best,” he said. “And we are getting better.”
A day before Carney arrived, Naheed Nenshi, the leader of Alberta NDP and the former mayor of Calgary, was asked what he wanted to hear from the prime minister. Nenshi said Carney needed to make the argument that “Canada works.”
“Canada works and it’s worked well for Alberta,” Nenshi told CBC’s Power & Politics. “We’re still the wealthiest province. We have record oil and gas production. People need to hear that message more.”
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There is indeed a story to tell. Consider, for instance, Alberta’s fabled oil industry, which has both benefited from national support and, in turn, created national benefit. That the success of each part of this country is bound up in the success of all others is a story too easy to forget.
From the stage on Thursday night, Carney did not literally say the words that Nenshi wanted to hear. But perhaps in so many words that was the message.
“Canada was never merely a bargain struck between provinces. It was never a series of transactions of gives and gets, of gross and net,” Carney said. “Canada is a promise that is so much greater than the sum of its parts.”
Carney himself might have doubts about what brought him to Calgary.
“This referendum, let’s be clear, it comes at the worst possible time,” the prime minister said on Thursday night.
The necessity or utility of this exercise is for Alberta Premier Danielle Smith to defend. But this latest test of national unity is at least an excuse to make the case that Canada works — a case that perhaps can’t be made enough.
That the prime minister limited his direct interventions in the campaign before now — though he has frequently been in Alberta in recent months for a series of significant announcements — was an interesting strategic choice, one that will be either redeemed or cast into doubt by next week’s result. But his arrival to the campaign this week seemed designed to ward off complacency.
The basic result of Monday’s referendum is perhaps not in much doubt. This is not a moment in which the future composition of Canada seems to balance on a knife’s edge — and not only because the pivotal question on the ballot is only about whether to have another referendum.
Most polls suggest seven in 10 Albertans could vote against separation.
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But the example of Quebec suggests that the rejection of secession in one referendum does not mean there won’t eventually be another. For the federalist side now, if there is to be some hope of burying the question of Alberta sovereignty for the foreseeable future, the margin next week must be as decisive as possible.
“At this pivotal moment, Albertans have a choice. We can build a stronger Alberta and an even greater Canada to leave for our children. Or we can burden them with years of deep division and great uncertainty,” Carney said.
“What we need is a decisive result on Monday to settle this question.”
Speaking to the broader electorate, he also warned against thinking that this referendum might be used to simply “send a message” to Ottawa.
“This is not poker,” he said.
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Carney situated his own story in Alberta and then placed Alberta within the story of Canada. He spoke of how Canadians, across provincial boundaries, have cared for and supported each other. He acknowledged that in previous eras, the federal government — led by Liberal prime ministers — had first “made Albertans feel like our resources weren’t our own” and then “that our energy contributions were running against the tides of history.”
That might make for some awkward moments at the next meeting of Liberal alumni. But Carney can now talk about how Alberta is at the “centre” of both his agenda and Canada’s response to this moment of great uncertainty. And however much the timing of this referendum might be inconvenient, it is a stroke of luck for the federalist side that a Liberal prime minister could stand on stage in Calgary this week with a reasonable claim to being the most popular political leader in Alberta.
“My friends, nobody achieves greatness on their own,” Carney said. “Not a pro athlete.… Not one great city on a vast prairie. Not a single province. It takes a team…. Those who came before us understood that.”
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In his own remarks in Calgary on Friday afternoon, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre said that while much of the referendum debate has rightly focused on what Alberta has done for Canada, “we must not forget and we must not ignore what Canada has done for the country.”
Canada has of course built national infrastructure, Poilievre continued, but the larger nation also provides size and strength.
“It all means that we have more room to travel, more room to breathe, more room to trade, more room to grow than we would have if we were isolated and alone,” he said. “It means being freer and more open than we would be by ourselves.”
Put another way, Canada works.
Assuming the team sticks together on Monday night, there is still the question of what Tuesday morning will bring. There is the margin of the vote that will matter, but there are also nine other questions on the ballot — covering everything from how Alberta handles immigration to whether the Senate should be abolished.
In his interview this week, Nenshi expressed hope that Carney might address those other questions. And the prime minister did repeat the slogan “No to the Nine” in an appearance in Calgary on Thursday afternoon, but he did not directly address the questions in his remarks on Thursday night.
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Nenshi has called those questions “separation in slow motion” and there is at least the potential for this referendum to give way to a series of new conflicts between Alberta and the federal government.
There is as well the question of what will become of Smith’s United Conservative Party. And there is now a separatist government in Quebec. And there remain the myriad issues, big and small and existential, that can always cause, or be exploited to create, conflict between the different levels of government in this country — not least the multi-generational challenge of responding to climate change and its causes.
But a renewed sense that Canada has worked and can work might put the federalist cause in a better place to overcome all the tests to come.
