Justin Trudeau did the right thing for Canada by announcing he would step down as prime minister. While the country, and his own caucus, grew increasingly critical of Prime Minister Trudeau, he and his senior ministers were hard-pressed to deal with any issue except that of his faltering leadership.
Here’s hoping Canada’s next duly elected prime minister does the right thing for Atlantic Canada by tackling long-neglected issues that are key to this region. Foremost among them is trade. President-elect Donald Trump sounds determined to impose punishing tariffs on Canadian exports, which could prove devastating to a wide range of Atlantic Canadian exports – from Newfoundland minerals to PEI potatoes to Nova Scotia tires to New Brunswick petroleum products to seafood from across the region.
It’s also getting more difficult to move goods interprovincially. Our region’s ferry system is aging and ailing, and neither federal nor provincial governments have done enough to set it right. As it is with ferries, so it is with securing a reliable land-based transportation corridor between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, across a narrow isthmus of land threatened by Fundy tides and climate change. Both Ottawa and the affected provinces agree this challenge must be tackled, but rather than get on with the job, governments are arguing over project costs.
A similar stalemate has emerged in the debate over equalization payments to so-called have not-provinces including Quebec and the three Maritime provinces. Resource rich Western provinces, now joined by Newfoundland and Labrador, say the existing equalization formula is too punishing to their citizens and too generous to recipient provinces. Not so, say leaders of the beneficiary provinces. They argue equalization transfers are properly used to to help them develop their own resource-based wealth.
From the CrowsNest, we spot no shortage of additional matters of “urgent and pressing necessity” – to use the standard Parliamentary language – that our legislators have yet to seriously address let alone redress.
Fisheries Minister Diane Lebouthillier, for instance, appears reluctant to recognize Atlantic Canada exists, let alone deal with hot-burner issues like the illegal elver fishery or long-simmering ones like indigenous treaty rights to fishing.
Finally, one other issue threatens to sweep all others aside. With nationalist and separatist sentiment rising in Quebec, who would speak for a united Canada, and a strong Atlantic Canada, in the face of another sovereignty vote in ‘la belle province’? No region has more to lose if Quebec goes its own way. The four Atlantic provinces would be geographically isolated from the ROC (rest of Canada) – inside a country dominated (and divided) more and more by regional interests.
In short, Canada is a nation in need of renewal.
In this context, we welcome Prime Minister Trudeau’s decision to step aside, which is not to say we have rushed to reach a judgment on his long term in office. We’ll leave that assessment to history, which will prove kinder to him than the current opinion polls (or straw polls in his caucus). After all, leaders can be reviled in the moment and revered by history. Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney was persona no grata when he left federal politics in the early 1990s. Upon his death in 2024, a beloved Mr. Mulroney was celebrated rightly as a nation builder.
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