What’s all the fuss about?

While on his trip to Brazil earlier this week, Prime Minister Paul Martin struck up a conversation with a curious Brazilian politician who peppered the prime minister with questions about Canada.

During their talk, taped by a television crew, Martin said Canada’s three territories will one day become provinces.

National news organizations, such as the Globe and Mail and the CBC, ignorant of the issue and too lazy to research the context, pounced on Martin’s casual comment. Then they reported it – as if it were a piece of actual news.

It’s not news, of course. The idea that Nunavut and the other two territories will one day become provinces is unremarkable.

For nearly 40 years, federal government policy on northern political development – whether it be Liberal or Tory governments – has been based on the assumption that Canada’s territories will one day become provinces.

Why else would the federal government spend four decades giving province-like powers to territorial governments, and encouraging the evolution of responsible government within territorial legislatures?

Provincehood has always been the long-term goal, especially since the influential Carrothers Commission report of the mid-1960s. The members of that commission recommended that Ottawa create a province-like government for the Northwest Territories based in Yellowknife, and give provincial-style powers to that government.

In turn, the federal government accepted those recommendations. That’s how the territorial government got the power to run the schools, set up a system of municipal government, run its own economic development programs and eventually take over the federal government’s hospitals and nursing stations.

In the 1980s, Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government, being more sympathetic to territorial provincehood than the federal Liberals, sped up the process.

After 1985, they started giving the NWT government its money every year in one single chunk of cash – and let the territorial government decide on its own how to spend it.

That was the beginning of the “formula financing” agreements between Ottawa and the territories, the method still used to provide Nunavut with most of the revenue that it gets from Ottawa every year to run the government. Afterwards, territorial legislatures in Yellowknife and Whitehorse began to run their own affairs, with no interference from the commissioner and other non-elected federal bureaucrats.

So in 1999, the new Nunavut government benefited from nearly 30 years worth of political development work that had taken place within the NWT legislature. That’s why Nunavut – new though it was – emerged on Day One with most of the powers and responsibilities possessed by provinces.

So in stating that the three territories will one day become provinces, Martin merely states the obvious.

The only real questions are about when the remaining powers will be devolved, and about how the constitution will be amended to allow new northern provinces to join Confederation as true equals.

There are now only three big areas left where territories do not have the authority that provinces have: control over natural resources, the right to regulate labour relations, and the right to run a Crown prosecutor’s office.

Of these, it’s control over natural resources – and the ability to collect royalties and taxes – that’s most important to Nunavut and the other territories. Premier Paul Okalik has rightly made this a priority for the government, and has pledged to negotiate a deal with Ottawa before the next territorial election.

For Nunavut, however, provincehood itself will not be an issue for many, many decades. Nunavut is simply too poor and too dependent on Ottawa right now.

But the Northwest Territories, soon to be benefit from a multi-billion dollar natural gas pipeline project down the Mackenzie Valley, could be financially self-sufficient within a very short time.

That’s why the people of Nunavut should pay attention to what’s happening with our old friends in the NWT. What’s developed there first often pops up here soon after. JB