This panel was the second part of a series beginning with Northcote Parkinson’s lecture. Three Canadians, from Newfoundland, Ojibwe-Cree territory, and the Prairies, met to discuss the aspirations of their own regions and the position of regionalism and federalism in Canada. The panel encouraged the audience to think deeply about what things really hold a country and a people together amid growing regionalist tensions in Canada.
Cabot Martin was a prominent Newfoundland lawyer. He was involved in the natural gas industry as president and CEO of Deer Lake Oil & Gas. With four other lawyers, Martin formed a company to protest the Muskrat Falls hydroelectricity project. He was legal counsel for the Department of Mines, Agriculture and Resources of Newfoundland from 1972-1989 and legal counsel to Premier Brian Peckford from 1979-1985. He spoke first during the panel, describing the concerns Newfoundlanders had about their place in Confederation. Martin’s main argument was that any renegotiation of Confederation could not be seen as a dualistic battle between Quebec and undifferentiated Anglophone provinces. Newfoundland, and indeed other provinces, were different and had their own perspective on the importance of regionalism. Indeed, he suggested, during the battle of 1948, Newfoundlanders had a vision of their place in Canada that demanded a decentralized nation-state, giving the province economic security as well as relative independence. Federalism, he suggested, did not have to mean high levels of centralization, but was an elastic concept that could take many forms. He was uncertain about the claim that regionalist would actually harm national unity: changes in the structure of Confederation could lead to a more humane government, which may be the only means by which the nation could be preserved.
James McCrorie was a professor of sociology at the University of Saskatchewan. As an activist, he worked on issues including North Sea oil development and rural development and sustainability. In the 1980s, he became Director of the Canadian Plains Research Center. He retired in 1996. In his remarks, McCrorie reviewed two historical moments in which the populations of the Prairies had advocated for regional control, while populations outside of the region forced them to move towards centralization. The first was the sale of Rupert’s Land in 1869 to Canada, and the resulting rebellions against Canada. The second was the conflict between farmers in the Prairies and the federal government in the 1930s, when the idea of Prairie separatism emerged in response to federal intervention in farmers’ economic prospects. The current shift from an agricultural economy to an energy-based economy premised on the extraction of oil, gas, and uranium, was again stimulating another debate about the future of the Prairies in Canada because the development of these resources was being funded and dictated by central Canadian interests.
Andrew Rickard was a Moose Cree band member who founded Grand Council Treaty No. 9, later renamed Nishnawbe Aski Nation, in 1973 to represent the collective aspirations of the people in James Bay Treaty (Treaty #9) and the Ontario portion of Treaty #5. Spanning most of Northern Ontario, NAN represents 49 First Nations. In his remarks, he took a different approach to regionalism, focusing on Indigenous nationhood. He held Indigenous nationhood as sacred and hoped that the determination of Indigenous groups in Canada to be self-governing would contribute to an “enlightened evolution” of the Canadian state.