Confederation for Economic Prosperity

Confederation rested on an optimistic theory that Canadians might have cultural differences but they shared basic economic interests in such things as railways and liberal trade relations. The new political entity that would be Canada would have two legislatures to reflect a view of human behaviour as having two major aspects: a federal parliament to reflect rational economic interest and provincial legislatures to reflect the other kinds of interests such as ethnicity and religion. The two kinds of interests operated at cross purposes: culture, religion, and ethnicity all worked to put Canadians at one another's throats and to prevent them from collaborating on economic progress either individually or collectively. Politicians would be more likely to agree on those shared economic interests in a federal arena stripped of all the non-economic business of government.

--E. A. Heaman, "Macdonald and Fiscal Realpolitik," in Macdonald at 200: New Reflections and Legacies, ed. Patrice Dutil and Roger Hall (Toronto: Dundurn, 2014), 202.