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Yet Justin Trudeau is likely to search in vain for such common purpose at the First Ministers’ Meeting he is hosting Friday in Montreal.

How different from the halcyon days just after the Liberals were elected, when the prime minister was able to stand at a microphone, flanked by 11 provincial and territorial premiers, and talk about the “united Canada” that would attend the Paris conference on climate change.

Any unity on show in Montreal will be 100-per-cent in opposition to him and all his works.

The 2015 meeting was another era, when the provincial premiers included six Liberals and two New Democrats. There are still four Liberal premiers but they represent Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and Yukon — representing less than 5 per cent of the country’s population.

Trudeau must yearn for the days when premiers came to Ottawa to kowtow in the hope some of the public’s adoration might rub off on them.

The amazing thing was that, for a brief moment in time, anything was possible in the Canadian confederation.

The premiers, under pressure to hold the government to account, are in resistance mode

In their platform, the Liberals had promised to reverse the Harper government’s decision to negotiate with provinces and territories to enhance the Canada Pension Plan.

Finance minister Bill Morneau said he hoped he could reach some kind of agreement with seven of the 10 provinces, representing two-thirds of the population.

Few gave him much chance to make the first changes in the program’s 50-year history, previous attempts at reform having ended in stalemate. Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Quebec had all expressed reservations about a mandatory increase to CPP contributions, while Ontario had already introduced its own planned enhancement, the Ontario Retirement Pension Plan. Yet by late June 2016, Morneau had convinced every provinces except Quebec and Manitoba to sign on to a new CPP deal that increased premiums and raised the amount of benefit available.

He was aided by the close relationship with Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government, which said it would abandon its own plans for a pension enhancement in Ontario if there were a national alternative. That concentrated the minds of the finance ministers around the table and they were finally persuaded when Morneau proposed to hike the Working Income Tax Benefit for lower earners to cover any increase in premiums.

There are obviously pros and cons to the CPP expansion — critics point out that increased premiums will cost jobs. But as Dr. Samuel Johnson observed on seeing a dog walking on its hind legs, “it’s not done well but one is surprised to see it done at all.”