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Originally Posted by milomilo
Well that hints at the bigger problem of Canada doing a poor job of promoting its national interests through cooperation with the Provinces. I'm a big fan of decentralisation, but Canada goes too far with its weak sense of national goals.
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I'll argue the opposite.
Every time we've had a 'national goal', we've done a better job of effectively dividing ourselves than uniting ourselves - with maybe the exception of the Canadian Pacific Railway.
The era of 1970-1995 was filled with "national goals" and it was one of the most bitter eras in federal-provincial relationships. By and large since then, we've not had much in the way of national goals and things have been relatively peaceful.
Things that unite other countries tend to divide us - for instance, the World Wars produced division in Canada whilst they produced unity in other countries.
We're a funny country that way. We do better when we focus on maintaining the status quo and getting things done by incrementalism, especially at the federal level.