Macdonald was biding his time, waiting for both the reaction to Riel’s hanging and general provincial discontent to dissipate. But he could not avoid the inevitable forever, and the election was called for February 22, 1887.
Despite Macdonald’s early predictions of defeat, his party won 122 of 215 seats, earning support from all parts of the country. The Liberals picked up only eight seats nationwide over their tally in 1872. Surprisingly, Macdonald outpolled the Liberals in Québec. Quebecers, it seemed, expressed their disapproval in the provincial election, but spared Macdonald when the federal vote was taken. For generations to come, Macdonald would be blamed for the poor showing of Conservatives in Québec, yet his supposed affront to French Canada did not undermine his political career. Nonetheless, the Riel incident was something Liberals would exploit for political advantage for the next century.
Despite Macdonald’s and his government’s longevity, the situation in Canada looked gloomy. The editorial in the Mail newspaper on October 27, 1887 raised serious doubt about the future of Canada.
Our enormous debt, the determination of the people of the Northwest to break loose from trade and transportation restrictions in defiance of the federal authority; the exodus of population from the Northwest and the far larger stream pouring out of the older provinces; and threats of secession heard in the three Maritime provinces; the decline in our exports which are less today by five dollars per head of population than they were in 1873, although since then we have spent no less than $120 million of borrowed money in developing our resources; the gathering of the local premiers at Québec to devise ways and means of allaying provincial discontent and averting provincial bankruptcy—these, to go no further, are phenomena, which, if they presented themselves in any other country, young or old, we should regard as the forerunners of dissolution.
The basic question was whether Macdonald’s vision of the confederation of British colonies, designed in large measure to resist an enormous pull of the United States, could be sustained. Would Canada succeed as an independent nation? Was Canada a mistake?
Despite a desire by Macdonald and the colonial office for a strong central government, the provinces had been winning more battles than they lost with the federal government. And citizen allegiance was proving to be more provincial than federal. The size of the provinces, particularly after expansion in Québec and Ontario, added to their power.
Macdonald envisioned provinces of roughly equal population, but seemed helpless when confronted with boundary changes. If he could not stop Ontario from growing, he had to let Québec acquire new lands to maintain balance. Macdonald feared more from provincial boundary readjustment than the other threats to nationhood. “I have little doubt that a great portion of the vast region asked for by the two provinces will be capable of receiving and will receive a large population ...I look to the future in this matter . . . farther ahead perhaps than I should. But are we not founding a nation? Now just consider for yourself—what a country of millions lying between English Canada and the Atlantic will be.”
Macdonald’s battles with the provinces continued. In the fall of 1887 the new Québec premier Honoré Mercier announced his intention to call a conference of the provinces to consider “their financial and other relations” with the federal government. The provinces urged revocation of the federal power of disallowance and sought more money from the federal government. Macdonald scoffed at the conference. There was nothing in the Constitution that contemplated such an arrangement and he was not about to give it legitimacy. He would negotiate grievances only with individual provinces. Harper appears to be following Macdonald’s lead, and did not hold a full-scale first minister’s conference over his first term as prime minister.
Macdonald wanted to retire, however, and was constantly surveying his Cabinet for a successor. He also wanted his Cabinet take more of the load of governance. But whenever Macdonald challenged the Cabinet to develop policy and offer opinions it simply deferred to his judgment. In frustration, he remarked “now this acquiescence is flattering enough, but it does not help me.”
Nevertheless, Macdonald opposed what he saw as a North America centric vision for Canada. Liberals called for a commercial union and unrestricted reciprocity with the United States. To Macdonald, this was an unacceptable first step towards political integration. “It looks like sheer insanity (for Liberals) to propose practically to limit our foreign trade to the United States when there is such an immense opening for the development of our commerce with the rest of the world.”
A larger threat to Canada than a debate over foreign trade policy, however, was the cultural divisions within its own borders. Agitator D’Alton McCarthy, a former Tory MP, had been fomenting discord over the use of the French language in Ontario and the West. He wanted Canada to pursue a vision and policies that supported a single national identity: an English one. He helped persuade the government of Manitoba to abolish the French language in public schools. Not long after, the Northwest Territories followed suit. But the use of the French language in schools was a right guaranteed by the articles under which these provinces and territories joined Confederation, a right that had been fought for and won by Louis Riel and his followers at a time when the decline of French in the West seemed inevitable.
Macdonald foresaw the inevitable concentration of the French language in Québec and its gradual disappearance elsewhere in Canada. “The people of Québec . . . wisely, I think, desire to settle the lands as yet unoccupied in their province and to add to their influence in eastern Ontario. The consequence is that Manitoba and the Northwest Territories are becoming what British Columbia now is, wholly English—with English laws, English, or rather British, immigration, and, I may add, English prejudices.”
Macdonald’s French-speaking colleagues wanted him to fight for the hard-earned rights of their brethren living outside Québec. But his English-speaking colleagues disagreed. With a divided caucus, Macdonald had to walk a fine line, opting for local self-determination and mutual respect on issues of language. “There is no paramount race in this country; there is no conquered race in this country; we are all British subjects, and those who are not English are nonetheless British subjects on that account . . . we must take great care, Mr. Speaker, that while we are calming the agitation and soothing the agitated feelings of the people of Québec, we are not arousing the feelings of the free men of the northwest by passing a resolution which postpones for an indefinite time, it may be a long period, a question which we can see, from the resolution they have adopted, that they are greatly interested.”
When a Liberal member from Québec moved an amendment that abolition of language rights in the Northwest Territories was inappropriate, he was supported by every French-speaking member of Parliament and opposed by almost every English-speaking member. Parliament was divided not along the lines of party, but along the lines of race, English and French.
Macdonald offered an unconvincing pretense of national unity after the federal government allowed the Northwest Territories more autonomy on language laws. Macdonald had deluded himself into thinking that issues respecting the French language would go away: “Let us forget this cry, and we shall have our reward in seeing this unfortunate fire, which has been kindled from so small a spark, extinguished forever, and we shall go on, as we have been going on since 1867, as one people.”
Having responded to problems in the Northwest Territories, Macdonald was confronted with new challenges in Manitoba. In 1890, the Manitoba Legislature unilaterally abolished legal guarantees for the use of the French language in the public school system. The federal government was called upon to disallow the legislation. As in the NorthWest, Macdonald was opposed to political intervention by the federal government, favouring a local resolution to the issue. Macdonald washed his hands of the matter in this letter to a French language resident of Manitoba: “I am strongly of [the] opinion that the only mode by which the separate school question can be satisfactorily settled in your province is by an open appeal to the courts.” The will of the majority, the letter suggests, was
