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1/ I finally have a hot take on Brexit! This one is going to seem like a bit of a stretch, though, so bear with me – I think it will be worth it. It is about the parallels between the Brexit quagmire and Canada’s treaties with First Nations.
2/ Part of the issue with Brexit is that a democratically expressed “want” (Brexit) is coming up against a legal “can’t have” (Irish border backstop) that stems form a “treaty” – in this case the Good Friday Agreement – that few UK voters realized applied to them.
3/ The GFA seemed to be about something and someone else, not the UK’s relation to the EU.
4/ What the GFA did, however, was reconfigure the structure of the UK by making its sovereignty, as it pertained to the future of Northern Ireland, less absolute – everyone accepted certain conditions and obligations.
5/ It is those conditions and obligations that Brexit throws into question by threatening to “thicken” the border between NI and the Republic.
6/ This reminds me of when Canadians’ plans for development come up against treaty obligations or the duty to consult. The governmentt’s “want” comes up against a “can’t have” that stems from a treaty (or rights attached to unceded lands)...
7/ ..dealing the majority society a reality-check they didn’t see coming. But the parallel between the two cases goes beyond the legal dimension of treaties. It is also about how treaties do or do not inform the public consciousness and public dialogue.
8/ The problem in the case of Brexit is that the GFA did not really change how the British (English?!) imagined themselves – how they understood themselves as a political society. That’s why the NI-Republic border issue was absent from the referendum campaign.
9/ Here lies the real parallel with Canada. Canada similarly suffers from the fact that only one of the two parties in the treaty process carries an awareness of the treaties and their obligations around inside their thinking of what Canada is, as a political society.
10/ Most Canadians can imagine Canada, its existence and its expression of sovereignty, without thinking of the treaties. That’s why Canadian governments keep making decisions that land them in court, generally on the losing side.
11/ This parallel occurred to me, by the way, while listening to the recent @BBC_Analysis program on Ireland, so h/t to them.
@BBC_Analysis 12/ My point is that treaties have meaning and effect not only when they are backed by the courts, but when they shape the self-awareness of both parties. When that doesn’t happen, we end up with Brexit chaos, or, in Canada, with court decisions on the duty to consult. /fin
