Bob Hunter ® strictly personal ® ms THERE IS shock and dismay and disappointment and despair in the Yukon and the Northwest Territories over the Meech Lake accord. There are a lot of sharp women who are ticked off, too. As one of the people who sup- ported the accord when it was first unveiled, | have to admit that my judgment, not for the first time, may have been premature. It’s a hazard of the trade, At one level any discussion about Meech Lakc is history, the Parliament of Canada having approved the accord, even though the country at large hadn't seen the fine print. But that’s not odd in Canada. We are a country still run mainly from behind closed doors, demo- cratic theories and ideals not- withstanding. Meech Lake, like metric, was fobbed on us by a clique. The difference is’that metric, for all its Napoleonic pretensions, was fobbed on us equally, froin sea to shining sea to frozen sea. I still like what the accord does in terms of decentralizing the country. I do not for a minute buy the argument of the nationalists that decentralization ‘‘weakens’’ the country, making it more suscep- tible to takeover by the U.S.A. If that were the case, the Swiss would have been taken over a long time ago instead of being, as they are, the most successfully independent people in the world, even though each of their cantons is virtually a free state in itself. In Canada, as the regions gain more power, we. find they become more obdurant than ever in the face of some larger take- over, having just been released from one that wasn’t all that big to begin with — but too big . anyway. A diverse, multi-faceted coun- try with a maximum of local autonomy is a better guarantee of preserving a national identity than any attempts to hammer us all down into one faceless statistical Canuck. Most of the cultural czars would have us ape Toronto or Montreal anyway. Power works in fairly predict- able ways, of course. When the 10 premiers sat down in a cosy room at Meech Lake six months ago to cut a deal with Brian Mulroney to break the constitu- tional deadlock between Quebec and the rest of us, they were (a) all men and (b) all Southerners. “A diverse, mutlti- faceted country with a maximum of local ~ autonomy is a better guarantee of preserving a national identity than any attempts to hammer us all down into one Jaceless statistical Canuck. Most of the cultural czars would have us ape Toronto or Montreal anyway.’’ In the lower parts of Canada, we think in terms of Down East - or Out West, or, on the few oc- casions when we think about it at all, Up North. But to the folks Up North, we’re all just Southerners, never mind gender or proximity to the Aulantic or Pacific. 1 appreciate feminist concerns about the Meech Lake accord, which are based on sound legal forebodings. That is, why trust the next batch of men making the next batch of constitutional amendments any more than this lot? But women are rather well- organized in Southern Canada and can take care of themselves in the courts and various theatres of lobbying activity. The folks Up North don’t have anywhere near the same clout. And yet they have been shut out literally in the cold. Their complaints’ are neither paranoia nor rhetoric. To set a condition whereby all the existing provinces have to’ agree before either the Yukon or the N.W.T. can gain provincial status is to tell a prisoner that his sentence has just been lengthened in- definitely. Or, while he struggles for iden- tity, those ‘‘above him’’ haggle over his fate, seeking to exchange favors among themselves. If those same rules had applied when British Columbia entered Confederation, would we have been accepted by either Ontario or Quebec as anything more than a territory — a resource rump to be exploited at leisure? It is a moot point whether we have evolved into much more than that, as things go. But, again, the thing I liked about the Meech Lake deal was its cryp- to-Balkanization. Screw cen- tralism. It sucks. Only bureaucrats and power freaks like it. (I know. I occasionally have moments of liking it too, but that’s confession of a sin, boy! Nothing to be proud of.) The fact is that the Meech Lake accord has ratified the status of the Yukon and the Nor- thwesi Territories as colonies. Ottawa is to them what im- perial London was to Canada in the old days, and, for that mat- ter, what London was to Rome a millenium before. It’s an old, sad story: im- perialism. It is alive and well in Southern Canada, folks. Shame on us. A process of amending the new | constitution should be undertak- en immediately. 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