Unity isn’t built by handing out vetoes like Halloween candy. But that’s precisely what Prime Minister Mark Carney proposes for Canada: a governance structure for major projects so Balkanized, so suffocatingly fractured, that it makes the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth’s liberum veto look like an efficient bureaucracy (more on this below). Carney wants every Premier and every federally designated Indigenous group to have a veto over major national infrastructure. In theory, that sounds like an inclusive approach. In practice, it’s a formula for paralysis.
Let’s set aside the political rhetoric and look at the mechanics. Under Carney’s vision, Northern Gateway, a pipeline that would have shipped Alberta crude to Asia through British Columbia, would never see daylight (just like under the sclerotic Trudeau regime), not because of B.C. alone, but because Quebec and a network of interest groups could all find reasons to kill it. And someone would. That’s not a guess; it’s institutionalized sabotage.
Canada’s constitutional architecture is founded on the division of powers: Ottawa handles matters of national importance, such as interprovincial infrastructure, while provinces manage their respective jurisdictions, like natural resources. Carney’s approach turns that on its head. By granting a national veto to every Premier and indigenous band, he weakens Ottawa’s ability to act in the national interest and undermines each province’s ability to chart its path. In a twisted irony, every Premier becomes the prisoner of the most obstructionist among them.
The Prairie Problem
Nowhere is the damage more acute than in the Prairie West. Alberta and Saskatchewan, rich in resources but landlocked, are perpetually beholden to access routes across other jurisdictions. Manitoba has limited, seasonal access to tidewater. Quebec and B.C., meanwhile, routinely use their geographic leverage as a cudgel, blocking energy projects that could lift national productivity. In Carney’s Canada, the Prairie provinces are even more stuck in an economic purgatory, asked to consent to everyone else’s plans but never able to execute their own.
Alberta and Saskatchewan would be held in economic purgatory and again left at the whim of so many envious sentiments outside their borders. Such an arrangement potentially serves the baser interests among Canadians instead of figuring out how to elevate cooperation and the national interest.
This isn’t a blueprint for unity. It’s a rigged game that makes winners of Laurentian power brokers seeking reelection and losers of the provinces that form the backbone of the country’s resource wealth. Once again, the Prairies are allowed to pay the bills but not sign the cheques.
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