The police dog sniffing the Chateau Frontenac ballroom for explosives, before the closing ceremonies last week of the Council of the Federation, was not the only canine that yipped a bit, but didn't bark.

There was also a tell-tale absence of snarling at the federal government by the premiers, an absence of rhetorical malice that spoke volumes about the evolving relations between Ottawa and the provinces.

When the federal government was mentioned, it was more in resignation than in anger. As often as not, the feds were portrayed as missing in action. In tone, the premiers often sounded to be speaking down to the senior level of government.

"We need strong federal leadership," Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty told reporters as the fifth annual council meeting closed.

"What we should be doing, when we come together as premiers, is figuring out the best way to prosecute an aggressive national plan that inspires 32 million Canadians.

"So we'll do everything we can on our own. But it's less than ideal."

Like nature, political leaders, too, abhor a vacuum. And, to some degree, anyway, the council is a way for the premiers to insert themselves into the leadership void.

When council chair Jean Charest of Quebec spoke of the feds during the conference, it was usually to give matter-of-fact instruction. "The federal government needs to... "

When he urged federal- provincial meetings on aboriginal poverty, he implied a power shift by offering "the federal government an opportunity to sit down with us."

He set out a to-do list for Ottawa on aboriginal poverty, on housing programs, on reducing Canada's immigration backlog, on aggressively defending NAFTA.

When asked why the premiers had invited the new Chinese ambassador to Canada in for a get-to-know-you, and whether this signalled dissatisfaction with the prime minister's relationship with China, Charest said, "I'll leave the federal government, I'll let them explain and give you their view of the relationship they have with China."

"The Council of Federation -- the provinces and territories -- recognize that this is very important relationship."

The suggestion of Ottawa's diminishing status -- and the premiers' rising role and responsibility -- recurred through the weekend.

When the council issued its progress report on the year since the last meeting, it was headed: Canada's Premiers: Taking Action on Climate Change.

Earlier, McGuinty had said that "as a body, more and more we're trying to grapple with the kind of issues we can solve on our own."

B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell noted, for instance, that with Ontario's entry last week into the Western Climate Initiative, provinces have signed on representing most of the country's population and gross domestic product.

Increasingly, McGuinty speaks of a planet with one people, of Canadians as world citizens and of a country with multitudes of competing rule books as absurd.

"What we're missing right now is real leadership at the federal level."

It's an outlook lauded by a growing community of like minded.

A coalition of Canadian environmental groups declared the federal plan for tackling climate change dead after Ontario announced it will join the WCI, a coalition of provinces and U.S. states developing a regulatory system to cap and reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions.

It's "a fatal blow for the federal government's weak approach to reducing emissions from industry," said Dale Marshall of the David Suzuki Foundation

It could be that the cooling of rhetoric suggests that relations between Ottawa and the provinces in Central Canada, at least, have actually grown worse rather than better.

Relationships are in critical shape, experts say, not when the parties are angry, but when they're indifferent.

Jim Coyle writes on provincial affairs.

His column will return in early August.