Dear Scotland,
You probably don’t know this, but you made us.
The first European to cross the continent and reach our Pacific coast
was Alexander Mackenzie – a Scot. Our first prime minister and chief
Father of Confederation, Sir John A. Macdonald? Scottish. So too our
second PM. Our country’s national dream, a railroad from sea to sea, was
realized in 1885 when Sir Donald Smith, head of the Canadian Pacific
Railway, drove The Last Spike at Craigellachie – a place named after a
village in his homeland. The man who did the most to create Canada’s
system of universal public health care, and chosen as “The Greatest
Canadian” in a national survey of CBC viewers, was Tommy Douglas. He was
born in Falkirk. The thistle and the red lion rampant on our national
coat of arms identify you as one of our four founding nations; half of
our provincial flags contain a Saint Andrew’s cross; and one of our
provinces – Nova Scotia – is named after you. There are said to be more
pipers and pipe bands in Canada than in Scotland. And nearly five
million Canadians identify their ethnic origin as entirely or partly
Scottish, which means we have almost as many Scottish-Canadians as you
have people.
You made us – and as a gesture of thanks, we’d like to offer some
advice on how to avoid unmaking yourself. This bit of history you are
living right now? This referendum thing? We’ve already been through
that. We may be a young nation but we have far more experience than you
on this issue. We nearly tore our country apart. Twice.
The
independence side in your referendum campaign is to be commended for a
few things. There’s no ethnic nationalism at the heart of the Yes
movement, and that is no small accomplishment. And the question to be
asked on the 18th of September – “Should Scotland be an independent
country? – sounds remarkably clear and simple. The Quebec independence
movement never dared ask anything so straightforward, because outright
independence has never been favoured by anything close to a majority of
the Quebec population.
Compare your question with the one asked of
Quebeckers in 1980: “The Government of Quebec has made public its
proposal to negotiate a new agreement with the rest of Canada, based on
the equality of nations; this agreement would enable Quebec to acquire
the exclusive power to make its laws, levy its taxes and establish
relations abroad – in other words, sovereignty – and at the same time to
maintain with Canada an economic association including a common
currency; any change in political status resulting from these
negotiations will only be implemented with popular approval through
another referendum; on these terms, do you give the Government of Quebec
the mandate to negotiate the proposed agreement between Quebec and
Canada?”
The Scottish question is shorter and simpler. But is it
really clearer? It has not escaped the notice of us, your cousins from
across the seas, that much of the case made by the Scottish Yes campaign
is neatly described by our fuzzy 1980 question. “Sovereignty” but
maintaining “an economic association”? Check. A new country, but also a
plan to “negotiate a new agreement” with the old nation? Check. A Yes
vote portrayed as promising co-operation rather than a severing of ties?
Check. And the idea that you can leave but keep the currency? Sorry,
we’ve heard this song before.
The Yes campaign in Scotland, as
reasonable as it imagines itself, seems to believe in the unreasonable
proposition that you can improve your marriage by getting a divorce. It
doesn’t work that way. The Yes campaign also promises that post-divorce
negotiations will take place in an atmosphere of complete calm and
rationality – and that rump Britain will give it what it wants. But that
glosses over the fact that the other side has demands, too. Scottish
First Minister Alex Salmond said recently that, if Britain didn’t let an
independent Scotland continue to use the pound, Scotland might refuse
to assume its share of the national debt.
Mr. Salmond has the
greatest interest in maintaining the fiction that normalcy will reign
and reason will rule in the event of a Yes victory – and yet the mere
mention of a hypothetical negotiation has even him testily making
threats. How well do you think it will go if things move beyond the
hypothetical? Having looked over the edge of the precipice that you are
marching up to, and having dipped our toe into the volcano more than
once, we can tell you: It will not go well at all.
There is an
alternative to independence: federalism. It’s something we’ve been
practising and perfecting for a century and a half. You’ve been at it
for a decade and a half. Give it time. We’re not sure if the “Devo Max”
plans to devolve nearly complete responsibility for taxation to the
Scottish Parliament, plans being floated by the British government in
the final days of a referendum, are necessarily the way to go. But some
devolution of taxing authority can take place. The Scottish Parliament
has little power to raise its own revenues – whereas Canadian provinces
have a full range of taxation and spending powers. That’s federalism.
That’s how strong subnational and national governments can coexist.
Once
upon a time in Quebec, the independence option was the choice of the
young, as it is in Scotland. That time has passed; most young Quebeckers
today do not imagine that their very real economic and social
challenges will be addressed by drawing a new border. But it took us a
half-century to get to this point. The same can happen for you, too.
So,
dear cousins from beyond the seas, here is our advice and our plea:
Stay in the United Kingdom. Let time pass and passions subside. Make
changes happen, but within the U.K. And meet us back here in, say, 2040.
You can take the U.K. apart then, if you still want to. We think you
will not. And we know this: If you take it apart now, you can never,
ever put it back together again.
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