Article content continued

On a failed oil sands tour last week Justin Trudeau told reporters “our job as a government is to bring everyone together and say we’re all getting what we want…” Really? Your job is make-believe? But even if he’s the prancing dunce we saw in India, are there no adults behind him aware of the extent of the crisis and able to find legitimate levers of power and pull them?

Photo by Jason Franson / The Canadian Press

Or are all the levers broken? Alberta Premier Rachel Notley notes plaintively that her province has won every court battle over this pipeline. But if silly games can stretch judicial proceedings out for years, even decades, and ultimately kill their target despite losing every time, it’s not the rule of law. It’s lawlessness in a robe and wig.

What is a court system for, if winning there means nothing? What is an executive for, if it cannot enforce the law? What is a federal government for, if its jurisdiction is flouted at will? What is a Constitution for, if the rule of law is just an empty phrase?

It won’t do for provinces to retaliate against one another, or the feds against a province, like squabbling sovereign fiefdoms. I’m all for decentralization. But some things are necessarily national, from defence to internal free trade to criminal law, or you have no country.

We could end up with literally no country if we mock resurgent Alberta separation as just gun-totin’ hicks with hygiene issues. Why stay in a country whose entire system of government appears to have no function beyond virtue-signalling?

Some think instead its key function is redistributing money. I beg to differ. But surely everyone right of Maude Barlow knows you can’t redistribute non-existent money. And business investment is fleeing Canada because we seem to be letting the rule of law slip away.

If we are, why do we have a government? Indeed, do we have one?