Time & Perspective Quote by Kim Campbell

Campbell’s line is a tidy piece of post-crisis political carpentry: it frames national unity not as a lofty ideal, but as a practical tool Canadians already carry around in their pockets. The key move is the phrase “common sense,” which flatters the public while narrowing the range of acceptable disagreement. If you oppose her preferred direction, you are not just wrong; you are unreasonable. That’s a classic statesman’s maneuver, especially potent in a country that prides itself on moderation as identity.

“Better future” keeps the promise expansive and safely nonspecific, allowing listeners to project their own anxieties onto it: jobs, constitutional stability, social peace, a workable federation. The real target is “fragmentation,” a word that sounds less like democratic pluralism and more like shrapnel. It cues fear of breakup without naming the most combustible particulars: Quebec sovereignty, regional alienation in the West, and the late-20th-century constitutional churn that made “unity” feel less like a slogan and more like damage control.

The subtext is strategic: Canada’s diversity is acceptable, even celebrated, as long as it doesn’t harden into competing sovereignties. Campbell isn’t just arguing against separatism; she’s policing the boundary between legitimate difference and unacceptable division. By placing the burden on collective “common sense,” she turns constitutional politics into a moral temperament test. It’s soothing rhetoric with an edge: a call for cohesion that doubles as a warning that the costs of disunity will be paid by everyone, not just the dissenters.