Quebec Premier Jean CharestRyan Remiorz
According to a report in Le Journal de Québec, Jean Charest will be seeking the support of the premiers at their annual conference this week to continue the Quebec health care side deal he negotiated with Prime Minister Paul Martin in 2004. That agreement, it will be recalled, exempted Quebec from the accountability measures that were to apply to the other provinces and territories in the 10-year, $41-billion health care funding agreement negotiated with Ottawa. With the agreement set to expire in 2014, Mr. Charest will be asking the premiers to re-affirm their support for a separate arrangement with Quebec before renewal negotiations begin.
Back in 2004, Mr. Martin portrayed the separate agreement with Quebec as business as usual, and he cited the separate Quebec pension plan arrangement negotiated by Lester Pearson as a precedent. With an election on the horizon, no one in Ottawa seemed to recall that it was precisely to combat that kind of erosion of federal authority that Pierre Trudeau got into federal politics in the first place. Nor did anyone care to ask Mr. Martin how he could justify treating Quebec differently in an area such as health care, where the province's needs are hardly distinct.
Mr. Charest, on the other hand, was much more effusive about his victory in negotiating the agreement:
"This is the first time in history that the federal government has signed an agreement in which they recognize asymmetrical federalism, which is a precedent," Mr. Charest said.
"For Quebec this sets a precedent that will be helpful to all of us as we go ahead and develop programs in ways that reflect our priorities."
That the other premiers went along with an asymmetrical arrangement subjecting them to more stringent reporting requirements was more surprising: after all, gallstones are painful in whatever language. Since then, however, Quebec has lost in Manitoba's Gary Doer an important ally around the premiers table. Mr. Charest's relationship with Alberta has deteriorated as a result of Quebec's behaviour at the Copenhagen climate change conference. And then there's Danny Williams, who's been engaged in a war of words with Quebec in recent months.
In this new reality, it will be interesting to see whether Mr. Charest achieves his objective at the premiers conference this week.