Let us imaginate a little hamlet made up of some ten families. Then let us imagine a clever thief breaking and entering into each of these houses, taking from each a certain amount of money, less here, more there, until he has accumulated the sum of $200. He then gathers together the heads of the ten families and lays before them this proposition:
Gentlemen, it is obvious to me that you are in financial difficulties. Now it happens that I have a little extra cash — $200 to be exact. I'm ready to share it among you; the size of each share to depend upon the size of each family. However, there are certain conditions to be met. This money may only be spent on hospital expenses according to a plan drawn up by myself. Furthermore, each of you must take from the money which remains to him, an amount equal to what I have given him and spend it on the same thing, (hospital expenses) as the money I have donated and according to the same plan I have made. This generous offer, gentlemen, will go into effects the day that six from among you have accepted my proposal. Those who refuse my offer will get nothing. However, this will not prevent me from taking from them each year a portion of the money which I am so generously giving to the rest of you. For example, in your case, Baptiste, the share of the $200 coming to you is $65, a year. I sincerely hope to see you impressed enough to subscribe to the projects, as the others have done. Still, I would not be surprised to see you reject it under the excuse of liberty or independence; I know your character. I leave you perfectly free. However, you won't get the $65 which is your share. And I'll be around next year to collect another $70 from your home, for you're certainly not the poorest of the ten. I have no doubt that in the long run you'll have to give in to pressures from within your family. Your own children, seeing their neighbors getting a share of the booty taken from the ten houses while they get nothing, will put the pressure on you: "'Look, dad, the devil with dignity and liberty! Our share of the money is there and we need it. We want it. So give in, agree to the proposition and we'll get it."
Now there, someone will say, is as fantastic a bit of imagination as you'll ever hear; a thief who doesn't bother to conceal his depredations, who has a yearly route which he follows and makes use of the money he steals to bring about the submission of his victims to his will in what concerns their domestic expenditures! What a fairy tale!
This is no fairy story springing from some fantasy of the imagination. It's a cold hard bit of fact which is actually going on. The intelligent reader may already have identified some elements of the parable — for that is what it is. The ten families are the ten Canadian provinces. The thief, is the federal government. The booty which is snatched from the ten — the $200 — is in fact $200 million which is taken each year from the provinces. The stubborn Baptiste is the province of Quebec. The share which it loses each year in refusing to be party to the federal plan for hospital insurance, is 65 million dollars. The amount which the federal government takes from it each year in order to maintain the generosity in which Quebec does not share, is a good 70 millions dollars.
From the day that the six provinces accepted the federal government's proposal, the plan went into effect and Baptiste's money went to nurture the plan in the other provinces without Baptiste drawing one solitary cent of benefit from it.
But then how can Ottawa speak of the "liberty" to accept or reject the plan, when refusal means contributing to meet the expenses without sharing in any of the benefits? It is injustice to force submission. It is coercion through pillage. It is dictatorship to the point of robbery.
Like the children of Baptiste in our parable, the citizens of Quebec are putting pressure on the provincial government to give in to Ottawa and to accept the Federal plan. Their pressure is manifest on the radio, in the newspapers, through the unions, by all sorts of organizations, which seem to have forgotten one very important item: the provincial government must take from its citizens by taxes, either direct or indirect, as much money as the Federal government has already taken in order to maintain what these naive innocents so fondly regard as free hospital care.
Well, among the citizens of Quebec the Social Crediters are not fooled nor have they been deluded into putting pressure on their provincial government to adopt the Federal hospital plan. They are against the invasion of provincial rights by the Federal government. And they are against any intrusion of the government (whether it be provincial or federal) into the affairs of individuals, families and private organizations.
This is not the first time that the federal government has gone beyond the limits of jurisdiction and invaded those of the provinces. It has trespassed into the field of universities and classical colleges; instruction and education belong, according to the constitution, to the jurisdiction of the provinces.
It has done the same with regard to unenployment insurance, which also pertain exclusively to the rights of the province.
The federal government has taken into its own hands the matter of family allowances, a matter which should have concerned the provinces alone. It has instituted a condition to the granting of such allowances, the attendance at school of the children. Whatever concerns schooling is strictly the business of the provinces. We might almost be tempted to remark that Ottawa's sole aim has been to get its finger into the school pie, for after all it has little concern for the family, as is evidenced by the fact that it has remained completely indifferent to the devaluation of family allowances over the years. These poor scrawny allowances seem to serve as nothing more than excuses for the federal government to stick its nose into that which in fact is none of its business.
When radio was born — something which the Fathers of Confederation couldn't possibly have foreseen — the government in Ottawa claimed it for its field of jurisdiction, and this claim was backed up by the decision of the Privy Council in England. Now as far as the sharing out of wave-lengths was concerned, this decision seems reasonable enough, in order to avoid a jumble on the channels of the air. After all, such wave lengths as were allotted to Canada by the international Council must be shared between the various stations of the country. But such a decision certainly should not be valid with respect to the contents of programs, for the messages which would ultimately go into the homes of the nation.
In setting up the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a federal agency and giving it complete authority over all programs, even those pertaining to education and culture, Ottawa violated the rights of the provinces in matters of education and culture, inasmuch as it has no more right to determine such matters than it has to determine the educational programs of our schools and universities.
Ottawa is continually on the look-out to seize any opportunity to centralize power — that is, to gather power into Ottawa's hands. The result is the gradual destruction of the federation system and the formation of a union under one absolute authority, a central goverment.
One might almost ask if it would not be better to put an end to a federation so prostituted by Ottawa, and to liberate the members to go their own way and pursue their own ends and aspirations without interference. There must be some very quick change and reform before the powers for centralization get out of hand completely.
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