OTTAWA—Last
week's health meeting confirmed the wisdom of several maxims dear to
teachers and coaches.
Do your homework. Develop a
long-term strategy. Hard work produces lucky breaks. And those who stick
together as a team will prevail.
Jean Charest's lucky break
happened overnight Tuesday at 24 Sussex when he persuaded Paul Martin to
intervene personally so that a side deal could be negotiated with
Quebec, acknowledging what was called "asymmetrical federalism that
respects Quebec's jurisdiction" in health care.
This was code for
"Quebec is different."
Getting there was 14 years in
the making. Charest has been working for some sort of particular
arrangement for Quebec within Canada since 1990, when, as a federal MP,
he chaired a committee that tried to save the Meech Lake Accord — the
doomed constitutional amendment that would have recognized Quebec as a
distinct society.
Charest has had the
reputation of idling between crises. But, in the months leading to
Quebec's election in April 2003, he focused on health care, immersing
himself in every detail. By the time the election was called, he could
rhyme off the number of doctors available in an emergency ward in any
Quebec hospital.
He won on his vow to make
health care the priority. But he also took office with a commitment few
thought he could achieve: to create a Council of the Federation. A year
ago, the premiers agreed to go along with Charest's pet project; last
week, they realized how valuable it was. As a council, they arrived in
Ottawa better organized and better prepared than Martin, who called the
health-care summit.
On the eve of tomorrow's
three provincial by-elections, Charest won a significant victory. The
stakes were high; Quebec premiers carry the weight of history when they
embark on federal-provincial negotiations.
This is particularly true in
Ottawa's old Union Station building. That was where Pierre Trudeau
announced the deal to amend and patriate the Constitution in 1981,
without Quebec, which sent René Lévesque back to Quebec city in tears.
It was where Robert Bourassa agreed to a final, unsuccessful attempt to
save the Meech Lake Accord in June 1990.
Charest understood the
symbolism, and used it effectively.
"I know that there have
been a lot of Quebec hopes that have been left high and dry in this
room," he said, after signing the deal.
Charest's years of hard work
had paid off; with his first big success in 17 grim months as premier,
he was widely praised in Quebec.
But there are other lessons
from the meeting.
Martin's team had a series of
tactics and little sign of a strategy. Each day, it tried harder to
control the next day's headlines than the conference itself. Flaws in
this approach soon emerged.
To begin with, the premiers
know more about the nitty-gritty of health-care delivery than the Prime
Minister or the federal health minister. This is not surprising; they
run the system on their turf.
As Charest pointed out, the
federal role in delivering health care is limited to research, prisons,
the armed forces, veterans and aboriginal reserves. There is no sign
that Ottawa's patients are better cared for than patients in provincial
hospitals.
The lack of strategy went
hand in hand with a lack of preparation. There was no federal plan for
health reform, simply a spreadsheet of numbers that kept changing as the
hours rolled by.
The premiers had several
strategic advantages: They knew Martin was in a position of weakness as
a minority prime minister; they had forged a tight working relationship
with each other through the Council of the Federation; none of them was
facing an election; and they knew Martin needed a deal. As Manitoba's
Gary Doer put it, "He needed a deal and we needed the money."
In contrast, Ottawa started
bargaining with no allies, then proceeded to insult its principal
critic, Alberta's Ralph Klein, by calling a media briefing during
Klein's formal remarks.
