The payoff of a needy relationship: Charest's political fortunes linked to Harper's

John Ivison
National Post

Thursday, February 16, 2006

Canada’s great game of strategy called National Unity is once again being played. If you listel closely you can almost hear the faint rattle of dice.

Two of the central players in this new match met yesterday behind closed doors to dicuss moves. Quebec Premier Jean Charest and Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the new man at th table.

Opening the national unity debate holds little appeal for most Canadians. They would rather see it left in the closet along with that first edition of Trivial Pursuit. The country has been paralyzed by past rounds. The sponsorship scandal was a byproduct of the last major unity battle. Canadians would likely prefer to leave the Quebec question alone.

Events, though, could determine otherwise, and it’s best to be prepared. Sometine in the next two years, Mr. Charest will have to seek another mandate. If th election were held today, he would lose to the Parti Québécois, rejuvenated by the leadership of the young and charismatic André Boisclair. If that happens, a third referendum on sovereignty would follow quickly - a referendum that the separatists could win.

The stakes are rising again.

Unfortunately, Mr. Harper has made a clumsy start. He chose a unilingual anglophone as parliamentary secretary to the cabinet minister in charge of official languages and la Francophonie. Yes, it’s probably true that, technically speaking, a unilingual anglophone can do the job just fine (See Brigitte Pellerin’s column on this page). But in politics, the optics matter, and there is so much emotion attached to language in Canada that Mr. Harper needs to tread with caution.

There are other skirmishes breaking out that could prefigure a larger confrontation. First has been the sniping over Mr. Harper’s day-care plan. Mr. Charest is standing firm in defence of Quebec’s vaunted child-care system. No need here to give Quebec families $1,200 a year per child under six. Give it to my treasury, Mr. Charest says. Ontario’s Dalton McGuinty says he has been promised that all provinces will be treated equally. These men have begun a debate in which Mr. Harper can’t afford to be seen as MIA.

Positioning and posturing is also taking place on the even-more complex "fiscal imbalance". Mr. Harper needs to be front and centre here as well, articulating where he intends to take the country. His media-avoidance strategy is not a winning one. (Already references to the Prime Minister’s Office as a "bunker" are being heard.)

Mr. Harper may not be able to wait until the throne speech in April to announce his direction. Mr. Harper does have room to manoeuvre. He has a bloom of good will in Quebec, where federalists and soft nationalists are taking his measure. It’s healthy for everyone if Mr. Harper can expand his francophone base and consolidate the Conservatives as a viable federalist alternative.

Mr. Harper has good advisers on Quebec, including Lawrence Cannon, Maxime Bernier and Josée Verner. The prime minister was an early advocate of something like the Clarity Act that sets the rules for the next referendum. He offers a respectful approach to federalism and a creative vision for using the tax system to advance federal priorities. He just needs to start playing for real.

"Prime Minister meeting with Premier Charest. Private meeting. No photo-op, no availability.... No decisions to come out of the meeting."

So went the media advisory on Stephen Harper's chat with the Quebec Premier, Jean Charest, yesterday. As Mr. Harper said in his election platform, it's clear "the time for accountability has arrived ..."

To be fair, the PMO flinched in the face of an outcry from the press gallery and scheduled a photo opportunity of the Harper-Charest summit. Let's hope that the new government learns quickly that the media abhors a news vacuum.

In the absence of Mr. Harper's take on things, we can only surmise that he didn't invite Mr. Charest round to have a good laugh at the federal Liberal election campaign. But even without an official record of the meeting, it is a fair bet that it was as "productive" and "cordial" as Mr. Charest described it when he arrived home in Quebec City. This is because the fortunes of the two men are inextricably linked.

Mr. Charest is facing re-election as early as next year, a contest Mr. Harper dearly hopes he wins, lest the new Prime Minister be left staring down the barrel of another referendum. Not only that, of course, Mr. Harper is hoping that the blooming relationship with Mr. Charest translates into more seats in the next federal election.

Much of the Quebec Premier's pitch to voters will centre on the contention that the province is better off in the federation than outside it. To argue that case convincingly he has to address the so-called fiscal imbalance, under which Quebec argues its spending responsibilities far outweigh its revenue streams.

The Quebec government set up a commission to look at the issue, under former finance minister Yves Seguin, and argued for a radical rebalancing of the federation. Mr. Seguin called for the complete transfer of GST revenues, in place of the existing health and social transfer payments, which would mean additional annual transfers of up to $8-billion a year flowing to the provinces.

Mr. Harper said in the leaders' debate last month that he was interested in the Seguin report, and the Conservative platform is explicit that the new government will "work with the provinces in order to achieve a long-term agreement which would address the issue of fiscal imbalance in a permanent fashion."

However, while he is committed to fiscal devolution, Mr. Harper has his own pressing concerns that require provincial co-operation -- namely patient wait-time reductions and the introduction of his new childcare allowance.

Because Mr. Harper has nowhere near $8-billion to spend on addressing the fiscal imbalance, it would make sense that he try to link what he wants --provincial co-operation on priority programs -- to what Mr. Charest and the other premiers covet: Ottawa's cash. TD Economics yesterday estimated that at $1.9-billion this year and between $5-billion to $6-billion in the following four years.

Mr. Harper plans to pay a $1,200 taxable childcare allowance to families for each child younger than six. To do so, he plans to kill the federal funding for the Liberals' national child- care plan after next year. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has already said he is reluctant to give up that agreement, while Mr. Charest has said he expects Mr. Harper to respect the terms of the five-year deal negotiated with the Martin government.

Ottawa has already conceded that it will have to negotiate a transition period with the provinces and, given we are going to have both Conservative and Liberal daycare plans running in tandem for a year, it is entirely possible that the provinces will win concessions to extend the life of the funding deal.

William Stairs, Mr. Harper's director of communications, said yesterday Mr. Harper will not do one-off deals with individual provinces.

"There are going to be trade-offs and not everyone will get what they want."

Mr. Charest may not get everything he wants, but his continued political health is linked so intimately to the new Prime Minister's own, it is inconceivable he will not emerge eventually with fistfuls of federal dollars. In return, Mr. Harper would be able to claim that he has increased funding to reduce wait times, introduced his childcare plan with provincial blessing and made a substantial downpayment on the fiscal imbalance.

The happy corollary for other provinces may well be that federal daycare funding, due to be yanked next year, may be quietly replenished.