2006: The most calamitous year yet?

Barring extraordinary good luck and/or the undeserved mercy of God, Canada today verges on what could prove the most calamitous year in its 139-year history as a confederated state. It has five central problems and is effectively confronting none of them.

The first is the economic uncertainty of its manufacturing industries, centered almost entirely in southern Ontario and Quebec. These, like those in the United States, are facing devastating competition from Asia. The Canadian tendency, however, will be to subsidize, rather than downsize, using federal money to do it.

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Where will the money come from? That's the second problem. It will have to come from booming Alberta, whose tar sands represent a fossil fuel reserve rivaling even that of the Middle East.

But in Canada, natural resources fall under provincial (i.e., state), not federal, jurisdiction. So Alberta will be asked to endure the federal usurpation of its provincial revenues to support uneconomic industries in Ontario and Quebec, almost certainly setting off a new western separatist movement.

The New Year looks much more propitious in Alberta. Housing starts and housing prices are soaring. New suburbs are bursting into being on every side of Calgary and Edmonton. At Fort McMurray in the heart of the tar sands, some construction workers must live in tents because accommodation is nowhere available. The city is 700 miles north of the northern boundary of Montana, and January and February temperatures often plunge into the minus-30s.

A far more virile threat of separation has arisen in Quebec, and that's the third problem. Polls in the current federal election campaign show the separatist Bloc Quebecois about to sweep every French-speaking constituency, effectively wiping out the federal Liberal Party in French Canada.

At the same time, the provincial Liberal government is deep down in the polls, foreshadowing a return of a separatist provincial government under a new young provincial leader who has turned the separatist cause into a youth movement. He promises to call a referendum on separation from Canada as soon as he takes office.

What roused new life in the Quebec separatist movement was the federal Liberal government's "sponsorship program," launched by Ottawa to strengthen Quebec's loyalty to Canada after the last referendum came within a hair's breadth of a separatist victory. But instead of invigorating the Canadian cause in Quebec, the program saw many millions in government money find their way into the pockets of Liberal party luminaries in Montreal, or into the coffers of the Liberal Party itself. This enabled the separatists to portray the federalist (pro-Canada) cause as purely self-serving. The federalists love Canada because they're paid to, jeered the separatists, and we all know what to call people who exchange love for money.

But this deep cynicism about the Ottawa government is not confined to Quebec. It shows in polls across the country, and that is the fourth problem. So why, non-Canadians understandably inquire, do you not elect the rival Conservatives?

The answer is equally baffling. Because, the pollsters are repeatedly told, Canadians fear the Conservatives have a "hidden agenda." They threaten to "change things." But don't you want change? Yes, comes the reply, but we don't trust the Conservatives to make the changes we want.

This alludes to the so-called "moral" issues. For example, the Conservatives have promised to repeal the bill passed by the Liberal government last summer authorizing the marriage of homosexuals. But will they go further? Will they compromise the unrestricted right of Canadian women to abortion? Above all, will they exercise the right of Parliament to overrule Canada's ultra-liberal Supreme Court?

The aspirations of this court are another source of concern. After Canada adopted a "Charter of Rights and Freedoms" in 1982, successive Liberal governments packed the court with judges fervidly committed to the de-constructing the country's traditional moral values. This wasn't hard since the appointments are subject to no parliamentary review whatever.

One decision this month typifies scores of others. In effect, the judges legalized bawdy houses. In so doing, they threw out the old criterion that "the community" should establish the standards of public sexual morality. From now on, they declared, the acceptability of any given form of sexual conduct will depend on whether it causes "harm." The judges, of course, will decide what is and is not "harmful." In the view of many Canadians, the court now rules the country. And the court has gone berserk. That is the fifth problem.

So all told, little of this portends a "happy" New Year for Canada.