The Milch Cow

The above cartoon was drawn in 1915 by Winnipeg cartoonist, Arch Dale, for the Grain Growers Guide, according to THIS link.

I remember reading the account of the CN or CP (I can’t remember which) surveyor who surveyed all the way across Canada to find the least-cost route for a trans-continental ribbon of steel, aka, railroad, which would unite the nation from coast to coast. I wish I could remember his name, but that was was one of the most useful insights into Canadian history I have ever read in my life, especially the part about him taking part in a Sundance ceremony on the Kootenay Plains, west of Nordegg, where I have spent many weekends.

There have always been two visions of Confederation, in my understanding. The first is the “Centrist” model, in which there is a strong central government and the role of Provinces is minimalized. The second is the “De-centrist” model, in which Confederation is a loose federation of provinces, with the federal government’s role minimal, serving essentially as a brokerage for inter-provincial spats and the provision of public goods such as national defence or policing.

I have always been somewhat partial to the second model myself, as are many westerners. Confederation, it is said, has not been good for some provinces. In the west, we see money flowing east, just like the Milch Cow cartoon. The Cow is pretty much about to crap all over Atlantic Canada.

Confederation has not been good to Atlantic Canada, Newfoundland especially. After watching a CBC documentary on the Passionate Eye entitled “Hard Rock and Water”, it is evident that this is the case. The documentary compares how Iceland and Newfoundland have fared since Newfoundland chose Confederation and Iceland chose independence. After watching this, you’ll sympathize with Easterners when it comes to Newfoundland’s push for independence.

Confederation has been bad for Newfoundland, in my mind, because it essentially pays the “less entreprenurial” Newfoundlanders to stay out of Alberta. I wish I could express it otherwise, but this is how I see it. In the East, if you are a young person who wants a future, it is an unwritten rule that you will move West. Many move to Alberta, and what Alberta ends up with are some of the most eager, enterprising and hard-working Easterners in Canada - or Alberta’s Brain Gain, as MacLeans has mis-titled it. They earn their money out here and send a little back “home”, for home is always “The Rock”.

Out in Alberta, the Newfoundlanders I have met often talk about “Lotto 6-42″, which is the requirement of having to work for six weeks of full-time employment in order to qualify for 42 weeks of pogey, and a lifetime of bologna steak barbeques and alcoholism. Alcoholism is a huge problem in the East, as is problem gambling with what little money is out there.

But back to the rail lines. The railway enabled trade to transcend geography. Before the discovery of oil in Alberta, it was just another Saskatchewan, with a heavily agrarian economic base that was susceptible to swings in commodity prices. Back then, folks in Ontario didn’t mind paying into Confederation and sending money out to Alberta in order to allow farmers to maintain some purchasing power. Raw goods shipped East from the Prairies were finished in Ontario and then re-sold out West.

Howevr, NAFTA changed this pattern and resulted in international leakages. In other words, some of the money sent out West would travel south to the US, essentially subsidizing US industry. This, in my mind, was the beginning of the breakdown of Confederation, and regional separatism is today’s manifestation of that.

Now, it seems as though NAFTA has created a score of “Sister Cities”, where the trade patterns create cultures more similar to each other, but in a North-South fashion. In this framework, San Francisco is Vacouver’s sister, Houston/Dallas is Calgary’s sister, Windsor is Detroit’s sister, etc. Trade and culture, it seems, have followed geography to an extent in the post-NAFTA Canada.

The Milch Cow is now facing North, and nowhere is this more evident than in Alberta. Albertans only see an East-West Milch cow, it seems. The Alliance Pipeline ships oil to Chicago, where it is refined more closely to the final markets. We ship oil to the US, and most of the value is added to it down there, as Jim Dinning has pointed out recently. Same with cattle. Something like 85% of our slaughter houses are American-owned, and most of the beef’s value-added occurs in the US. This was evident to me when I saw a bag of “Steak Nuggets” which were made in the US from Grade A Canadian beef.

This is one of the reasoms why I find Western Separatism to be a misguided venture. All it’s really doing is changing the orientation of the Milch Cow from East-West to North-South. In one way, regional separatism is a logical outgrowth of NAFTA, as culture follows trade, as does politics.

What if the Western Canadian Concept were to come to fruition? Alberta’s culture resembles that of Texas in some ways, and really, arguments about regional separatism are simply arguments about which way the Milch Cow ought to face. Albertans are simply saying that their culture has more in common with the Midwest U.S. than it does with Ontario and the East. By arguing for Alberta Separation, we are simply trading one Milch Cow for another.