Ontario, Quebec premiers tout might of ‘Central Canada’
In an extraordinary muscle-flexing display from Canada’s two largest provinces, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty and Quebec Premier Jean Charest emerged yesterday from a historic joint cabinet meeting touting a renewed economic and political powerhouse: Central Canada.
The federal government’s relevance to Canadians on matters from the environment to trade has eroded to a point where Ontario and Quebec are resolving to “move the ball forward” on their own, McGuinty said.
After escalating the rhetoric in their spat with Ottawa over a proposal to limit greenhouse gas emissions, McGuinty and Charest opened a new front, brazenly instructing the federal government to sign a free trade deal with the European Union.
The premiers suggested that Prime Minister Stephen Harper is now such a peripheral figure that he’s even less than the “headwaiter to the provinces” in Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s famous put-down of former prime minister Joe Clark.
“He’s not in the restaurant ..... and we’re not looking for him,” McGuinty said at a news conference to mark a series of accords signed during the first-ever joint cabinet meeting between the provinces.
