Johnny: Amélie from the French town of Dieppe where so many Canadians lost their lives in a futile, ill-conceived raid during the Second World War asks: “If Canada is gone, as you claim on your show, why do I still hear about and read about a thing called The Canadian Federation?”

Good question.

Yes, Amélie there is a Canadian Federation. Canada is gone Amélie, but the Canadian Federation lives on. It is a loose federation of English speaking provinces that have not joined the United States or were refused admittance; a sort of leftovers from The Fracture. They are, for the most part, a poor imitation of their former self geographically speaking.

The Canadian Federation is a bit like your European Common Market but with a lot less unity. At the heart of the Canadian Federation is the Council of Prime Ministers.

You heard right, Prime Ministers. As soon as the Canadian Confederation disintegrated, the Premiers began calling themselves Prime Ministers and acting as such. In reality, they were acting like Prime Ministers long before The Fracture. It may be a Freudian ego, macho thing, we don’t know, but the Premiers during the period leading to The Fracture quarreled more than usual with the Prime Minister of Canada and, as I said before, acted more and more like Prime Ministers in their own right.

Heading the Council of Prime Ministers of the Canadian Federation – not to be confused with the Canadian Confederation – is a Secretary-General. A sort of super bureaucrat appointed by the Council of Prime Ministers. His or her main responsibility is arranging and coordinating the quarterly meeting of the Prime Ministers.

There is no capital city, per say, though some business of a strictly administrative nature is still done in the former capital of Ottawa.

Each provincial or state capital, as some provinces like to call themselves, host, in turn, the meetings of the Council of Prime Ministers.

The business of the Council of Prime Ministers, for the past few years, has been taken up with trying to develop a common foreign policy and negotiating free trade agreements among themselves.

So far, they have not agreed on a common foreign policy or reached any substantive agreements on trade issues. They also have been unsuccessful in deciding on a new flag. The Maple Leaf having been found inadequate to represent the Federation with Québec having more maple trees than the leftover provinces combined.

I hope, Amélie that answers your question. Thank you, merci beaucoup for your e-mail.