New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton arrives to his party’s election event in Toronto, February 16, 2009. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese.

It was less than a month ago (Monday, July 25, 2011) that Jack Layton announced: “ I have a new, non-prostate cancer that will require further treatment … So, on the advice of my doctors, I am going to focus on treatment and recovery … I will therefore be taking a temporary leave of absence as Leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada.”

On TV and in the photographs published at the time he did not look good — especially when you think of how good he did look during the greatest election campaign of his life, which had only ended on Monday, May 2, 2011. Even so, it was a shock to get up this morning and discover that, at the still all too youthful age of 61, he “died peacefully at 4:45 a.m. ET today at his Toronto home, surrounded by family and loved ones.”

Montreal-born Jack Layton walks along the route of the annual St. Jean Baptiste parade in Montreal proudly waving Quebec's national symbol and flag, the Fleur des Lis, June 24, 2010. Photo: Peter McCabe, The Canadian Press.

Beyond expressing our grief and sadness, along with everyone else, we don’t have any deep thoughts. But we think it is worth quoting from two impressive enough documents that have quickly surfaced on the world wide web.

The first is a report from The Canadian Press. Jack Layton, it notes, “was a man who carried politics in his genes. A great-grandfather was a Father of Confederation. His grandfather, a Quebec provincial cabinet minister in a Union Nationale government. His father, a Tory cabinet minister under Brian Mulroney … He was a believer. He made that clear in the first sentences of [his book] Speaking Out Louder : … “Politics matters. Ideas matter. Democracy matters, because all of us need to be able to make a difference.” It somehow seemed appropriate as well that CP ended its report with an allusion to an old religious text: “Deuteronomy 34 says God took Moses up to a high place and showed him the Promised Land in the distance … ‘I have caused thee to see it with thine eyes, but thou shalt not go over thither.’ So Moses the servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab, according to the word of the Lord.”

Jack Layton addresses supporters as he starts his election campaign in Ottawa, March 26, 2011. Andrew Vaughan/THE CANADIAN PRESS.

The second document is Jack Layton’s own last message to Canadians, dated Saturday, August 20, 2011 — less than two full days before his death. Our own two favourite passages are: “To my fellow Quebecers: On May 2nd, you made an historic decision. You decided that the way to … something better was …  working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians across the country. You made the right decision  …  And finally, to all Canadians: Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world. We can be a better one — a country of greater equality, justice, and opportunity. We can build a prosperous economy and a society that shares its benefits more fairly. We can look after our seniors. We can offer better futures for our children … My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we’ll change the world.”

Two recent pieces on this site have also taken up issues that are or ought to be close to Mr. Layton and his party, at a poignant time in its history and the history of Canada  — in our opinion at least : “New NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel’s Bloc past shouldn’t matter .. but in real world of Canada right now it probably does?” (August 3, 2011) ; and “What if Canadian Senate reform also became a way of recognizing Québécois nation in a united Canada?” (June 27, 2011).

Jack Layton talks with reporters in Kamloops, BC on Friday, April 29, 2011. Andrew Vaughan / THE CANADIAN PRESS.

As for exactly what the promised land that Moses will never see may finally look like, we were still impressed by a verdict in Chantal Hébert’s  Toronto Star column this past Saturday, August 20 (when one of her subjects was all too sadly writing his last message to Canadians): “Even if NDP Leader Jack Layton manages to resume his duties as official opposition leader, the New Democrats and the Liberals will not pose a serious threat to the ruling Conservatives until they figure out a way to aim together in the same direction rather than shoot each other in the foot.”

We now know that Mr. Layton will not be resuming his duties this fall, all too sadly again. But our guess is that, in the strange spring and summer of 2011 (in Canada as in so many other parts of the world), he has nonetheless already made his own historic big contribution to the biggest picture of “working together in partnership with progressive-minded Canadians across the country” — from Bona Vista to Vancouver Island, and then all the way to the magnetic North Pole, in the land of northern lights, when the ice worms nest again.  (Or, to repeat, as Pierre Trudeau might say: “ Canada is a great country, one of the hopes of the world.” But: “We can be a better one,” and we owe it to Jack Layton to keep on trying, again and again and again.)

An electronic board displays trading activity on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday, Aug. 4, 2011. Photo: AP /Jin Lee.

It used to be the Canadian English language newspaper of record. It may be somewhat less than that now? But the current online version is still where a person like me looks first, laid back on the waterfront in a much-hated big city. And here’s what I seem to be getting, at the end of the first week of August, in the still-crazy-after-all-these-years summer of 2011:

(1) “Dow falls more than 500 points in worst one-day drop in years” (Thursday, August 4). So the apparently phony US debt-ceiling crisis on August 2 did not happen after all. But there was a mini-stock-market crash anyway.

(2) “TSX takes another sharp drop … The Toronto stock market tumbled again Friday, a day after investors punished stocks and sparked the worst one-day decline in two years, with no comfort coming from a stronger-than-expected reading on US employment.” Think about it, Canada: we’re hardly immune, after all!.

Like oil and gas in Western Canada, mining in Western Australia has a lot to do with the country’s current economic buoyancy. But it’s an old question: can a country’s economy really prosper by natural resources alone?

(3) “Beyond jobs report, U.S. labour market remains weak.” Which is no doubt one reason why  the stock markets saw no comfort in a stronger-than-expected reading on US employment. There are other reasons. And I for one can’t see how “government” has much to do with any of them. (Ed note: See “Down to the wire on debt-ceiling blues .. US economic royalists are back, but hardly anyone is calling their bluff,” on this blog last week!)

(4) “Clouds gather over Australia’s sunny outlook … ‘If we didn’t have mining, Australia would be like Portugal, Spain, maybe Greece and Ireland,’ Mr. Byrne said.” If you add “oil and gas” to mining, some might say almost the same thing about Canada? There have been various signs lately, in the Globe and Mail as elsewhere, that economic scepticism is widening and deepening, among various economic deep thinkers. The US debt-ceiling hub-bub was just a bit of froth on top of deeper waters. Stock markets in various places right now seem to be asking: how deep and wide does it go?

Canadian Bollywood actress Lisa Ray: the world is changing, and like Toronto-born Ms. Ray Canada has to try harder to “reap the spoils of global trade.”

(5) “Why Canada must reap the spoils of global trade … On the export front, Canada sold $478.1-billion worth of goods and services abroad in 2010. This is up from $439.5-billion in 2009, but down from a peak of $563.1-billion in 2008. Among our G7 peers, Canada is second only to Germany in total exports as a percentage of GDP … Since hitting a high of 45.6 per cent in 2000, though, exports as a percentage of GDP has been on a downward trajectory. In 2010, the figure was 29.4 per cent (up slightly from a recessionary low of 28.7 per cent in 2009).” Again, think about it, Canada: etc, etc. (Ed note: And also see “The debt-ceiling blues .. what does latest crazy Washington game of chicken mean way up north?” — on this blog about a month ago.)

(6) “North York Hebrew academy defaced with swastika.” Someone stateside on MSNBC TV this morning alluded to how President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign was starting to bear some family resemblance to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s campaign of 1936. The defacement of the North York Hebrew academy in Toronto suggests other signs of a 1930s revival in the air. There is still some agreement among economic historians that it took the Second World War to finally get the western world out of the Great Depression of the 1930s. Lately it is sometimes hard not to wonder: what will it finally take this time?

Another piece of good news: Jennifer Aniston, 42, seems to have found true love at last, with fellow actor Justin Theroux. At the moment they are apparently vacationing in Hawaii, birthplace of President Obama — who may not be doing as badly as many think right now .

(7) “The media’s game of ‘gotcha’ can teach the NDP some lessons.”  I want to end on some  positive note. One obvious candidate is that things today are still not as bad as they were in the 1930s (and especially, it does seem, in Canada, where we remain somewhat more loyal to the old modern public service state that began to dig in during that troubled decade!). Another piece of good news is that today’s Globe and Mail has a column by local New Democratic Party guru Gerald Caplan, whose writing I almost never agree with.  And today I can only bow in almost unreserved admiration for at least Mr. Caplan’s final paragraph: “It’s only a matter of time until Quebec realizes the province and its interests are no longer a priority for much of Canada, especially for a right-wing government that Québécois repudiated and where the west and Ontario dominate. For all of us who can’t envision a Canada sans Quebec, there is dangerous potential here. Unexpectedly, the NDP has emerged as the best federalist bridge between Quebec and the rest of Canada. Jack Layton and Nycole Turmel are the embodiment of that bridge.” (My “almost unreserved” etc relates to Mr. Caplan’s “only a matter of time.” The time, I think, is already here — even if many of us outside Quebec are still living in an impossible dream.)

"René Lévesque et Pierre Elliott Trudeau ont profondément marqué l’histoire contemporaine du Québec et du Canada."

If Canada already were the country of the future it could be — and should eventually become — the news that federal NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel was until  recently also a member of the Bloc Québécois (and is apparently still on the books of the vaguely sovereigntist provincial party, Québec Solidaire) would not be damaging to the party Jack Layton still hopes to lead to greater things, when he recovers from his current bout with cancer.

On November 27, 2006, for instance, the Canadian House of Commons “overwhelmingly passed a motion recognizing [the] Québécois as a nation within [a united] Canada … Conservatives, most Liberal MPs, the NDP and the Bloc voted 266 to 16 in support.” Five days before Prime Minister Stephen Harper himself had declared :“The question is a straightforward one: do the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada? The answer is yes.”

Jack and Nicole : as Prime Minister Harper himself has said: “do the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada? The answer is yes.”

It is only a very short step from here to the practical recognition that, as francophone Quebecers of various stripes have long maintained, Quebece is not a province like the others. Some day in our ultimate wisdom we Canadians outside Quebec are going to happily enough accept the plain truth that Quebec’s attachments to Canada are inevitably somewhat different from those of other provinces — but nonetheless strong and enduring, and indeed patriotic. (Today’s Quebecers are the descendants of the first people who called themselves Canadians — a historical fact that will never change.)  And when we do, Canadian “national unity” will be stronger than ever before — and more than strong enough to last as long in Quebec as in any other province.

In this same spirit it does seem worth underlining that for even longer than she has been a member of either the Bloc Québécois or Québec Solidaire, Nycole Turmel has also been a member of the New Democratic Party of Canada (since 1991, in fact: her ties to the Bloc go back less than five years before this past January, when she gave them up). This cluster of past memberships apparently breaks NDP rules, technically as it were. But it also fits very nicely with the new political truth that the Québécois constitute a nation within a united Canada!

Prime Minister Trudeau (left) and Quebec Premier Rene Levesque who appear to be starting their debate early as they arrive for dinner at Government House in Ottawa, ON, Jan.4, 1979. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Peter Bregg.

All this having been said, Canada is still not the country of the future it could be quite yet. Many of us outside Quebec remain attached to an abstract old vision of Canadian national unity that has never worked and never will, but still seems important in the real world of practical politics — especially, as the Alberta political science professor Duane Bratt has suggested, “the further west you get from Quebec.”  And, as the eminent Ontario political journalist John Ibbitson has just noted, the May 2, 2011 Canadian federal election has now “revealed that it is indeed possible for a party to form a majority government without Quebec’s support” (even if this government has still won less than 40% of the cross-Canada popular vote!).

So we have such headlines as “Turmel’s Bloc past badly wounds the NDP” (in the Toronto Star) and “Dalliance with separatists could spell trouble for NDP” (in the Vancouver Sun). And who doubts that there are still some damaging real bullets in the air when Dimitri Soudas, spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, tells anyone who will listen that: “This is yet another worrying example of the NDP not being up to the job of governing Canada when its interim leader was a full member of the sovereigntist Bloc Québécois just a few short months ago.”

“NDP Leader Jack Layton appears with Hull-Aylmer candidate Nycole Turmel during a campaign stop in the Outaouais, Sunday, April 3, 2011. Turmel won her riding by a landslide.”

And yet again time may finally tell that Jack Layton did the Canadian future a great service when he appointed  Nycole Turmel interim NDP leader during his second struggle with cancer — being “well aware” of her complex Quebec political past “when he promoted her as his replacement last week.” Whatever else, the  November 27, 2006 resolution of the federal Parliament on the Québécois nation within a united Canada finally made clear that neither Pierrre Trudeau nor René Lévesque won the great battle over Federalism and the French Canadians in the last quarter of the 20th century. The future is going to be some characteristically Canadian compromise between their two conflicting visions.

Another crucial thing about the May 2, 2011 Canadian federal election is that the people of Quebec voted to start exploring the specific practical meanings of this compromise, through the New Democratic Party of Canada. And what Mr. Layton just may have grasped in his unusual appointment of Ms. Turmel is that focusing on this exploration is the best chance there is for the future of both his party and Canada at large.

Jack Layton and friends on the steps of Quebec City Hall.

The 41st Parliament of Canada has not even held its first meeting quite yet. But already Jack Layton’s new Quebec-majority NDP official opposition is showing just how different it is from anything the federal New Democrats have ever known before.

Former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis, son of former federal leader David Lewis (silent partner of Pierre Trudeau’s 1972–1974 “Liberal-NDP” minority government), has declared: “My father used to say to me, ‘Victory won’t happen in my time’ …  “And I used to say to my children, ‘It won’t happen in my time.’ But now I think it’s possible. I’m 73, but I hope I can hang on, because I think Jack can win.”

This may or may not prove correct. But if it does, Jack’s ability to serve as gifted midwife in the rebirth of a fresh and more realistic mainstream Quebec federalism for the 21st century will have played a big role. And if Mr. Layton is going to demonstrate such ability, he will have to show a lot more of two key qualities than he has so far. (Granting that it is still far too early to rush to any definitive judgments, of course.)

The first is just raw courage, of a sort typically in short supply among Canadian politicians. The second is some well-thought-out concept of what a fresh and more realistic mainstream Quebec federalism for the 21st century will have to be — to both strengthen the Canadian future, and sell inside and outside Quebec!

New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton raises a glass of beer during a campaign stop at a sports bar in Montreal, April 14, 2011. (REUTERS/Shaun Best).

Take two issues that have already popped up. The first is “whether the NDP Leader believes the support of 50 per cent plus one in a referendum on sovereignty would be enough for Quebec to separate from Canada.” The second is the question of Quebec’s representation in a slightly reformed Canadian House of Commons, designed to bring the representation of the three most rapidly growing provinces of BC, Alberta, and Ontario more into line with the ancient democratic principle of representation by population.

It may be that Jack Layton has already displayed  a little unusual courage on both issues. But he has also shown how neither he nor his party as yet have any even plausible ideas of fresh beginnings on the road ahead, in either case. All the “Jack of Hearts” has done so far is underline just how tough his new job is going to be.

1. “50 % + 1: Layton rajuste le tir” …

NDP Leader Jack Layton clarifies his party's position on conditions for the separation of Quebec from Canada at the NDP Quebec Section General Council at Montreal May 28, 2011.

If anything, the Quebec contingent of the Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa seems to have even less idea than Jack Layton himself about how to deal with the new reality of the NDP’s now 59 Quebec seats (more than 78% of Quebec’s total of 75 federal seats). Last week’s quite artificial controversy over whether the support of 50% + 1 in a referendum on sovereignty would be enough for Quebec to separate from Canada is a case in point.

The Globe and Mail described how it all got started in a report first posted very late on the evening of  Tuesday, May 24: “Comments from some of the new Quebec MPs suggest they may still be open to … an independent Quebec. Managing this political land mine will be an ongoing issue …  Journalists reporting for Quebec … make up a large chunk of the Parliamentary Press Gallery. Their questions on Tuesday were almost singularly focused on whether the NDP Leader believes the support of 50 per cent plus one in a referendum on sovereignty would be enough for Quebec to separate from Canada. A 2005 NDP policy paper called the Sherbrooke Declaration states that the party would recognize such a result. Asked … to repeat that, Mr. Layton would say only that it remains party policy but that the Supreme Court’s position on the issue — which does not give a minimum number —  is a better guide.”

The apparent ambiguity of this initial answer was not well received by either Quebec provincial politicians or a number of Jack Layton’s freshly minted federal New Democrat MPs from Quebec. As reported by the CBC: “All three Quebec [provincial] political parties were quick to denounce the comments Wednesday, declaring in a uniform voice that Quebec has the right to set its own conditions for a referendum.”

Jack Layton and some of his younger new Quebec New Democrat MPs.

Still more importantly (no doubt), as reported by Le Devoir on Wednesday: “Selon Guy Caron (Rimouski-Neigette), la déclaration adoptée par le NPD à Sherbrooke en 2005 entérinant la règle du 50 % +1 n’est pas compatible avec la Loi de clarification, dite la loi sur la clarté référendaire, de Stéphane Dion adoptée par le gouvernement libéral en 2000 [taking the Supreme Court’s position a little further still]. «Pour nous, c’est deux choses différentes. Ce qu’on a comme position pour le parti, c’est la déclaration de Sherbrooke et c’est ce qu’on va mettre de l’avant.»”

By Thursday Mr. Layton himself had qualified his initial ambiguity and come down more squarely on the side of M. Caron and other Quebec New Democrats. The Globe and Mail was reporting: “It’s official: Layton backs 50%-plus-one rule for Quebec secession.” And according to Le Devoir: “50 % + 1: Layton rajuste le tir … «Ce qui constitue une majorité, c’est 50 % + 1», a déclaré M. Layton en conférence de presse hier, alors qu’il présentait son cabinet fantôme. «C’est clair comme de l’eau de roche que c’est la politique de notre parti depuis cinq ans.»”

The federal NDP leader looked like he was having some trouble here — because he was. Neither he nor his party have had to think seriously about these kinds of issues in the past. It will take a while for them to catch up.  At the same time, it is also arguable, we think, that little harm has been done to the larger cause of the Canadian future. More than 40 years and two referendums (on ambiguous questions) have now elapsed since René Lévesque established the Parti Québécois. For growing numbers of us in the rest of Canada outside Quebec at any rate, a few things are much clearer than they used to be. And we think Jack Layton himself is showing some promise when he “says attitudes have changed a lot in the past three decades and people are tired of old debates that pit Quebec against Canada.”

New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton and wife Olivia Chow celebrate their victories at NDP headquarters in Toronto, Ont., Monday, May 2, 2011. (Darren Calabrese / THE CANADIAN PRESS).

Of course, “Quebec has the right to set its own conditions for a referendum” on the future of Quebec. But neither in principle nor practice can it determine how the rest of the country would react to any serious attempt by Quebec to actually “separate from Canada.” Having followed this issue closely for more than 40 years (whether we wanted to or not), it is now very clear to us that Canada without Quebec is simply impossible — geographically just for starters. If Quebec ever really were to “separate” from Canada, Canada would be destroyed..

From this standpoint, the question of whether 50% + 1 or some more demanding formula would be required for Quebec to “separate” from Canada is academic at best. If things ever do get this bad, under whatever formula, it will be game over for everyone who lives in Canada now. We will all have to find new homes.

Outside Quebec anger and apathy will be the main emotions in the air.  There will be no wise and gentle negotiations about anything — and it is sheer political fantasy to imagine there could be. Quebec will not be able to negotiate with Canada, because Canada will no longer exist.

Campaigning in Quebec City, with the everyday French he learned on the streets of Montreal (and/or Hudson, Quebec), April 2011.

We will leave this argument here for the moment. Though we note as well in closing our colleague Randall White’s counterweights article of just over a year ago now: “Who’s afraid of Pauline Marois : or why does Québec still have more people who call themselves Canadian than any other province in Canada?”

We also feel that Alexandre Blanchet’s most welcome comment of qualification on this article from this past March is very interesting, But we don’t find it quite convincing in the end. Our exact reasons we will put off for another time as well. (While just noting quickly that the 59 Quebec seats in the Canadian House of Commons won by Jack Layton’s New Democrats this past May 2 arguably lend some vague support to Dr. White’s original argument, as such things look in the rest of Canada outside Quebec, at any rate!)

What M. Blanchet’s comment does show without doubt, we think — like the views of Guy Caron and other new Quebec New Democrat MPs whose comments “suggest they may still be open to … an independent Quebec” —  is that we all still have some distance to go before we can altogether escape what Jack Layton calls the “old debates that pit Quebec against Canada,” inside and outside Quebec. Mr. Layton’s job on this front is really not going to be easy.

2. Protecting Quebec’s status in the Parliament of Canada : yes of course, but the Senate is the logical place to do it

Should Quebec get more seats in the Canadian House of Commons? The Jack of Hearts seems to be saying yes.

The question of Jack Layton’s approach to Quebec’s representation in a slightly reformed Canadian House of Commons, designed to bring the representation of the three most rapidly growing provinces of BC, Alberta, and Ontario more into line with the ancient democratic principle of representation by population, arose this past weekend. And we just want to make one as-quick-as-we-can-manage comment — or plea for clearer thinking.

As the background has been explained by the Toronto Star: “NDP Leader Jack Layton says he won’t let down his new supporters in Quebec and will propose practical measures defending the language and culture of Quebecers … He says the NDP will start by fighting to keep Quebec from losing influence in the House of Commons … Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government is looking to increase the number of MPs in other provinces where the population has grown quickly … That would reduce the percentage of seats Quebec currently holds, something that has enraged provincial politicians.”

As elaborated on by the CBC website: “The Conservatives proposed in April that Canada’s three fastest-growing provinces should get more seats in the House of Commons by 2014, with Ontario gaining 18 seats, British Columbia gaining seven and Alberta five … Under the proposed legislation, all other provinces, whose populations are not growing as quickly, would be guaranteed to keep the number of seats they have. Quebec currently holds 75 out of 308 seats, 24.4 per cent of seats, despite having 23.2 per cent of Canada’s population.”

Le chef du NPD, Jack Layton, s'est entretenu avec le maire de Québec, Régis Labeaume, en matinée, lundi 18 avril 2011. LE SOLEIL, JEAN-MARIE VILLENEUVE.

What Mr. Layton is proposing , it seems for the moment at any rate, is some formula that ensures Quebec retains its current percentage of seats in the Canadian House of Commons, by being granted new seats along with BC, Alberta, and Ontario — even though its population has not increased so as to warrant any new seats of this sort. And : “When asked whether Canadians would accept Quebec getting more seats despite already being over-represented in terms of population, Layton said a balance must be struck … ‘We have to represent and recognize in this delicate dance of statecraft some of the other principles that were on the minds of our founders when they set down and laid things out, that striking that balance and having Canadians accept that there need to be some kind of compromise,’ he said.”

We agree with Jack Layton altogether, when he urges that we the Canadian people of the early 21st century “have to represent and recognize in this delicate dance of statecraft some of the other principles that were on the minds of our founders” — especially when it comes to ensuring some form of entrenched long-term recognition of the founding Canadian commitment to the survival and vigor of the French-speaking majority in Quebec. But we also think it is altogether illogical to try to express this recognition in the Canadian House of Commons, which, as we understand the founding principles, is supposed to express the modern democratic principle of representation by population (one person one vote, and all that, etc, etc, etc).

The logical place in which to entrench legislative or parliamentary expression of the founding Canadian commitment to the survival and vigour of the French-speaking majority in Quebec is a reformed Senate of Canada — the institution that the  founders did intend to protect various regional interests, as opposed to the interests of the popular electorate from coast to coast to coast. And here again we also note in closing another more recent counterweights article by our colleague Randall White: “NDP (and Liberals) could support Harper’s Bill S-8 on Senate elections, in exchange for provincial representation concept that makes sense for Quebec.”

NDP Leader Jack Layton responds to reporters questions at a news conference in Quebec City, Monday, April 18, 2011. (Jacques Boissinot / THE CANADIAN PRESS).

It is all too painfully clear of course that, as logical and potentially creative as using Senate reform as a mechanism to help express Quebec’s particular role in the confederation of the 21st century may be, there are huge roadblocks in the way, flowing from unexamined and increasingly tired old assumptions about the Canadian future, in various strategic quarters.

Dr. White, to take just one very minor case in point, broached the concept of special Quebec representation in a reformed Senate on the Globe and Mail website half a dozen years ago, in response to an argument of the day for just abolishing the Senate from the excellent John Ibbitson. And in a Globe and Mail article on Mr. Harper’s current “step by step” plans for starting Senate reform, at last, just this past Sunday (or Monday, today, if you still crave the printed page), Mr. Ibbitson quite aptly notes that “Many provinces balk at electing senators, who could compete with provincial governments as voices representing regional interests. Quebec especially opposes Senate reform … The NDP wishes to see the Senate abolished.”

(An article in the Toronto Star by the often very astute and compelling Bob Hepburn, just this past Wednesday, also demonstrated the continuing hostile resistance to any kind of creative Senate reform — as opposed to outright abolition — that still haunts many important regions of contemporary Canadian informed opinion.)

NDP Leader Jack Layton gives the thumbs-up to the largest crowd ever at a rally in the province of Quebec, Saturday, April 23, 2011 in Montreal. (Jacques Boissinot/Canadian Press).

Again, all this just seems to us to underline the extent of the difficulties that face any Jack Layton who seriously aspires to serve as gifted midwife in the rebirth of a fresh and more realistic mainstream Quebec federalism for the 21st century.

To finally come up with something sensible that just might actually work, he must not only change the minds of many others — friend and foe alike. He must also change his own mind, along with at least some sticky traditional views of the party he leads. It is of course no slight on him and the already quite surprising things  he has managed to achieve in his political career, to wonder if anyone among us (we the Canadian people) would be equal to such a task?

To end on some positive note, the good news between the lines may nonetheless be that it is still not clear the answer is no one at all. The jack of hearts may yet show that he has a head and a stomach as well. And as recently as two months ago who would have taken at all seriously the prediction that Jack Layton’s New Democrats would win 59 of 75 seats in Quebec!