The New West Partnership: Are you paying attention, Manitoba?TROY FLEECE/The Canadian Press
Maybe it's the vast geography, or maybe it's just plain old sibling rivalry. Whatever the reason, our provinces don't tend to act much like true "partners" in Confederation. Relations tend to be indifferent at best, and outright hostile at worst. Perhaps Ottawa really does have a meaningful role to play: If the provinces didn't have Parliament Hill on which to heap their discontent, they'd probably eat each other alive.
But every so often you see shining examples of provinces playing nicely. As a result, some very interesting things are taking place out West.
In April, the governments of British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Alberta launched the New West Partnership, a deal creating an economic region of nine million people and a combined GDP of more than $550-billion. The basic idea is to end silly provincial trade barriers, and to allow workers, investment and public procurement to flow freely across the region. Alberta and B.C. had already established their own trade and labour mobility agreement in 2007; the addition of Saskatchewan adds another million folks and about $50-billion in economic activity.
It's the type of agreement that all 10 provinces tried to cobble together in the 1990s with the ill-fated Agreement on Internal Trade. That deal wrapped up with a lot of handshakes and photo ops, but then the premiers went back to their legislatures and proceeded to ignore the whole thing.
Some might say the New West Partnership agreement stands a better chance of succeeding because the three Western provinces are so similar. But many Central or Eastern Canadians unfamiliar with these three amigos would probably find their differences quite surprising.
Start with B.C. The past few years have been relatively uneventful politically, but the province has had a tradition of swinging wildly across the political spectrum from one election to the next. Politics are theatrical and scandalous. There's also a lot of cash sloshing around B.C., which, on the surface, seems rather odd. Other than tourism and some resources, B.C. actually lacks a concentration of any significant official industry. (Unofficial industries, however, are smokin' hot - nudge nudge, wink wink.)
Alberta, on the other hand, has had the same governing party since 1971. The last time an election was a nail-biter was in 1977, when schoolchildren marched to the polls and voted for the great horned owl to become Alberta's provincial bird. (The Blue Bird came in second and, to this day, talks about ballot box irregularities.) The economy is boom-bust-boom. Culturally, it's a zesty mix of rural social conservatives, urban cappuccino capitalists and newly arrived international migrants whose heads swim trying to make sense of it all.
Add to this mix Saskatchewan, the birthplace of medicare and the CCF (which later morphed into the NDP). The province swings between left-wing and right-wing governments, the current Saskatchewan Party belonging to the latter. Despite having lost so many folks to Alberta over the decades, Saskatchewan remains a fiercely proud and loyal place, with a culture as unique as anything you'd find in Newfoundland. It's only big-league sports team, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, makes the CFL more religion than sport. And despite having officially vanished 15 years ago, Vi-Co is still a common beverage.
Despite their vast differences, Canada's three westernmost provinces have found enough common ground on which to establish the largest multilateral agreement on trade and labour liberalization that Canada has ever seen. It seems it took the one thing they all had in common to kick-start the co-operation: size. Even with a combined population of nine million, B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan are only about the size of greater Chicago. On the global stage, it's still quite a small region.
But by setting aside their political differences and co-operating, the Western provinces are showing what can be done to create one medium-sized economic region out of three very tiny ones. Petty trade barriers, walls that prohibit worker migration, and inane rules around local procurement can only hold them back and make them seem even smaller.
So, Manitoba, are you paying attention?
Todd Hirsch is a Calgary-based senior economist at ATB Financial. The opinions are his own.