Speaking Notes for

Hon. Bernard Lord
Premier of New Brunswick

Council for Canadian Unity

"The Role of provinces in building Canada"

Drummondville, Québec
September 6th, 2001

Thank you Monsieur Parisella,

I want to begin by thanking the Council for Canadian Unity for your kind invitation to speak with you this evening.

The mission of the Council to strive for a better understanding of Canada, its institutions, and its peoples is a profoundly important one. And it is just as relevant today as it was yesterday.

I could not help but note that the Council has been in existence since 1964. Now to some that may seem like a long time. In fact, the council was born one year before I was!

I don't know whether this makes you young and me old, or vice versa. But it does indicate that the purpose of fostering Canadian unity is one that transcends generations.

I see this as a recognition of how we have formed our extraordinary nation almost 135 years ago. And it's a recognition that our work in building Canada is never done.

The Canadian Ideal

As one of the four founding provinces of Confederation and Canada's only officially bilingual province, New Brunswick is considered by many as a microcosm of what I call the Canadian Ideal.

That you can build a country on principle such as diversity, tolerance, fairness, and inclusion.

The Canadian Ideal is timeless. It is timeless because fundamentally, it is about people - their aspirations and their character. The Canadian Ideal speaks not just to our own aspirations as a country but to the character so many of us strive to instill in our own children. We want our children to grow up embracing diversity, tolerance, fairness and inclusiveness.

We, New Brunswickers, believe in our province and we believe just as much in our country, Canada.

As Premier of New Brunswick, I feel strongly that my job is not just to build and strengthen New Brunswick but to build and strengthen Canada. That when New Brunswick is stronger, so too is Canada and vice versa.

The responsibility of building Canada is as clear a responsibility for provinces as it is for the federal government.

The Role of Provinces in Building Canada

For all our principles, we Canadians are practical people. We want what works best. We chose a federation as our governing structure. We want it to be a federation that is flexible and dynamic to accommodate differing approaches to provincial priorities.

However, the challenges we face as a nation demand a more intense coordination and collaboration of efforts than ever before. From free-trade to skills training to productivity and innovation and tax reform, the issues we face as a leading industrialized and knowledge-based economy do not lend themselves to easy definitions of constitutional responsibility.

But the political responsibility is more than clear - it is all of us. The federal government, the provinces, and I submit, Canadians as citizens of this country.

Take, for example, the federal government's Speech from the Throne earlier this year. It lists more than 20 initiatives that implicate provincial or shared jurisdiction between Ottawa and the provinces.

As Minister Dion himself stated in a speech to the Canadian Study of Parliament Group Conference in June 2000, "The federalism of today is characterized as much by the interdependence of responsibilities as by the division of powers".

It is possible to respect the legal and constitutional mandate we have been entrusted with while at the same time being practical in working together for the benefit of all Canadians.

Provinces must work collaboratively not just with the federal government but amongst ourselves as well.

In New Brunswick, we have taken this approach to heart. As Premier, I am convinced that inter-provincial collaboration is an important ingredient in the building of a stronger New Brunswick within a stronger Canada.

Among other things, in 2000, we helped forge a new Council of Atlantic Premiers - a declaration signed by myself, Premier Binns, Premier Hamm, and former Premier Tobin - to provide our region with a stronger coordinated voice on regional and national issues. The Council has already ratified greater harmonization in transportation and insurance standards amongst the provinces.

We also have neighbors west of us with whom we want to work. That is why I will be in Quebec City this fall to pursue cooperation between our two provinces on a range of bilateral issues. Energy, health and transportation issues will top our agenda. I look forward to meeting with Premier Landry.

Just last month at the Annual Premiers' Conference in Victoria, against all the media odds, all provincial and territorial premiers agreed that we had to do more than simply ask the federal government for more money for health care. We also had to take common steps amongst ourselves now to improve health care services for Canadians.

For the first time, the APC agenda was divided into two parts: federal/provincial/territorial relations and provincial/territorial collaboration.

I sincerely hope this will become the new standard in how we conduct our Premiers' meetings.

We have demonstrated our ability to work collaboratively on issues that matter to Canadians and we have a clear obligation to continue to do this.

We will be meeting in January, 2002 in Victoria to focus on four key areas of health services: pharmaceutical management; human resources management; continuing care, and determination of scope of practice amongst health professions.

In doing so, we are sending a clear message to the federal government as well as to all Canadians, that collaboration for a common purpose is a good way to build our country.

To the citizen witnessing 'another federal-provincial scrap', it may not always seem that way. The highly-charged debate over health care funding last year was ultimately advanced, but it took the provinces collaborating together to force the issue. Similarly, the federal government's new national shipbuilding policy, although not yet resolved to New Brunswick's satisfaction, was still the result of continued provincial pressure over a series of annual premiers conferences.

Indeed, the fact that it took a former premier to move the file as Industry Minister is proof of how provincial dynamics are key to making national policy.

These aren't policy abstractions. This is real. I believe Canada must move decisively to a clear model of collaborative federalism.

Empowering People

Collaborative federalism is also about empowering people. For ultimately, it's not academics or constitutional theorists for whom we are accountable. It's to people. And people want us to make Canada work.

In doing so, governments must be prepared to invite people into the decision-making process. We can't be afraid of listening to people; of making the institutions and processes of government more responsive.

In New Brunswick, to make government more responsive and accountable to people we've reinstated local and community decision-making in education by creating new district education councils. New community economic development agencies will begin operations this fall and early next year in every region of the province.

Next year, new regional health authorities with local and community input will be formed.

And, as an exercise in direct democracy you are particularly familiar with in Quebec, we even held a referendum this past May on the future of video lottery terminals in New Brunswick. It was the first provincial referendum since 1967.

That is, of course, the value of federalism. Each province can tailor its approach to governance to its own specific needs.

Fiscal Imbalance

But the ability of each of us to do so is affected by what I believe is our most pressing national problem - Canada's fiscal imbalance.

Unless we confront this issue as Canadians, it will corrode our very unity of purpose as a country. It will create two types of Canadians some richer and some poorer. We will be divided by where we live. Political alienation will be the inevitable by-product of growing economic and social inequities.

There are two types of fiscal imbalance - the first one can be found between the federal and the provincial governments and the second one between provinces themselves.

The first one can be explained by the fact provinces face rising social costs in health and education, while the federal government benefits from rising revenus and surpluses.

The second one is based on the fact that some provinces are in better financial shape than others to meet these social costs. Yet, we all have the same growing social costs.

Strengthening Equalization

All Premiers agreed in Victoria last month that addressing the fiscal imbalance must be an immediate priority of the federal government. We agreed that this should be done by strengthening the Equalization program beginning with an immediate removal of the Equalization ceiling. We also called upon the federal government to work with us to develop a stronger and fairer Equalization program including looking at a 10-province standard and a more comprehensive revenue coverage.

Equalization is one of the most Canadian of all principles. It reflects Canada's ideal of sharing our wealth and of equality of all people. It's why it is entrenched in our Constitution; an achievement led by a former Premier of New Brunswick, Richard Hatfield.

But this principle is under duress. It has been characterized as government welfare. But this is more myth than reality. Like the myth that Equalization is only for Atlantic Canada. In fact, seven provinces, including Quebec, receive Equalization payments. And all provinces, except Ontario, have at one time in their history received Equalization payments.

Or the myth that the governments of Ontario, Alberta, and BC are subsidizing Equalization. In fact, it is not a transfer from one province to another but a transfer from Canadians to Canadians through the federal government. Its goal is to allow Canadians to receive comparable levels of public services at comparable levels of taxation.

I am working every day as Premier of New Brunswick so one day we won't need to receive Equalization. However, in the meantime, Canadians in New Brunswick are entitled to have access to comparable health care services as Canadians in all provinces. That is the principle at work here and that is why, when Equalization doesn't truly equalize, the resulting fiscal imbalance can foster fault lines of division, and alienation.

The fiscal imbalance has an impact on the governance of our federation as it is fostering an increasingly apparent power shift in roles and responsibilities between Ottawa and the provinces. The federal government, armed with financial flexibility, is looking for new ways to spend and deliver programs directly to Canadians rather than transfer funds through provinces which have the jurisdictional responsibilities in so many of these fields.

From the national Millennium scholarship fund to the regional Atlantic Innovation Fund, new federal dollars are being steered away from joint programs with provinces to direct delivery by the federal government.

Our first Prime Minister, Sir John A. MacDonald, was remarkably prescient a century ago when he put his finger exactly on the situation we are experiencing today. In his own inimitable style he warned: "Given a government with a big surplus and a big majority and a weary opposition and you would debauch a committee of archangels."

I believe that addressing the fiscal imbalance will restore the federal-provincial balance of collaborative federalism.

Conclusion

When I travel throughout New Brunswick, I tell people in every part of our province that New Brunswick will be strong when every region of New Brunswick is strong. I submit the same is true of Canada. Our nation will be strong when every region of Canada is strong.

Fixing the fiscal imbalance will help make Canada stronger. Practicing collaborative federalism will help ensure we continue to be strong as a nation.

The true spirit of Canada is one of a partnership. A partnership where all of us are united by a common sense of purpose and the Canadian Ideal. And when that purpose and that ideal is challenged, we must never for partisan or personal gain, put party before country.

We must all find ways as First Ministers, Legislators, Parliamentarians, and as individual citizens to work together to preserve that original spirit that took root so many generations ago on which this nation was built. A spirit, which is now being carried forward by the next generation of Canadians. A generation, which is secure in our history and hopeful for our future.

Thank you.