Canada's Flawed Federalism
WALLER, HAROLD M.
A Crisis Delayed? Canada's Flawed Federalism By Harold M. Waller Montreal It would be excessive to suggest that Canada's confederation is crumbling. But the recent circus in Ottawa that...
...But the two provinces insisted that the new revenues should be disregarded and a beleaguered Martin ultimately acceded...
...The latest crisis highlighted the nation's longbedeviling challenges: shoring up the federal system, providing meaningful representation to the various regions, building truly national parties, and dealing with the desire for independence by a substantial number of Quebecois...
...Furthermore, party discipline in the House quiets the voices of MPs from those provinces...
...But the commission investigating Adscam, headed by Justice John Gomery, found plenty of evidence raising serious questions about elements of the Christien government...
...Disputes about federal and provincial jurisdictions have exacerbated matters...
...Testimony from those who engaged in possibly illegal behavior resulted in widespread public revulsion at the Liberals...
...The federal system, the nature of the parties, regionalism, and the Quebec issue all played a role in the dramatic events of the past few months...
...The provincial Liberal government led by Premier Jean Charest has stumbled since taking office in 2003, and current polls indicate the next election in 2007 or 2008 will restore the PQ to office...
...Alberta, which has the country's largest concentration of oil and gas wealth by far, is seeking special considerations in the light of its leading economic role...
...Martin will continue to muddle through...
...In that sense, Adscam was well intentioned, though skeptics might ask whether governments should use tax dollars in public relations campaigns to influence their citizens...
...Their frustration is compounded by the fact that many voters who are dissatisfied with the Liberals resist Tory entreaties because they find the party unpalatably conservative on social issues...
...There are also three independents in the House, former Liberals or Conservatives who are either estranged from or unwanted by those parties...
...The Liberal government of then Prime Minister Jean Chr?©tien, lacking a contingency plan for a separatist victory, was shocked and perhaps disoriented by the close call...
...Although some purely federal functions exist, the shared programs and those that are exclusively provincial have greater visibility and salience for Canadians...
...They were granted to counter Quebec's separatist urge and to reflect its singular role as the bastion of French language and culture in North America...
...The effort was supposed to further national unity and was not perceived as a significant departure from existing practice...
...It is relevant to recall, too, that the troubles Canada faces are grounded in constitutional debates that have gone on for decades...
...In the near term, the worst of the political storm appears to have passed...
...This has bred a certain arrogance-the belief that it is the country's natural ruling party...
...Separatism, which appeared dead if not buried two years ago, is experiencing a revival in the wake of Adscam...
...Second, Quebec is usually hotly contested...
...Two main consequences spring from the nature of the party system...
...The NDP (19 seats) pursues a democratic socialist agenda and holds scattered seats in a few parts of the country, mainly in urban areas...
...When the Liberals are in power, the West is most likely to be alienated...
...Federal sponsorship of various events was envisioned as a way of making Canada more visible and demonstrating to Quebec voters that not everything important derives from the provincial authorities...
...If Quebec is at the root of this spring's crisis in Ottawa, the effects may yet play out in the province itself...
...Since its strategy is to use whatever it gleans in Ottawa to help the province gain independence, it hardly cares about what is crucial to the country as a whole...
...The threat of another nonconfidence vote remains, but it is unlikely that such a move would succeed before the summer break...
...First, various interests, especially regional ones, are always at risk of having their needs overlooked...
...The historically depressed Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, for instance, have benefited from various forms of federal largess, notably equalization payments (transfers from the few relatively affluent provinces to the poorer ones) and unemployment insurance...
...Of the two smaller parties in the Commons, the BQ (54 seats) has established itself as the leading federal (though clearly not federalist) party in Quebec but does not compete elsewhere...
...Harold M. Waller, who writes for the NL on Canadian affairs, is a professor of political science at McGill University...
...Another constitutional initiative was rejected in a 1992 national referendum...
...When it reinvented itself in 2003, Westerners, especially Albertans, became the dominant force...
...The BQ wants to minimize the representation of the other parties to further its ambitions, calculating that a diminished presence for the national parties in Quebec will lead to increased feelings of alienation from Canada among the voters and a greater willingness to consider the independence option...
...In the United States the pendulum has swung the other way...
...For the moment, therefore, Martin retains a tenuous hold on power...
...While not the direct cause of the recent crisis, the shortcomings of Canadian federalism created an atmosphere where Adscam was possible...
...Federal-provincial relations have also been affected by what is called "asymmetrical federalism...
...It has limited appeal nationally, but lots of leverage due to the current configuration of the Commons...
...The subsequent maneuverings that caused Adscam transpired in the aftermath of the 1995 unity crisis, when secessionists in Quebec lost their referendum by a hair...
...The House of Commons is today virtually evenly divided between those supporting and opposing the prime minister...
...The billions of dollars worth of promises that Martin made to retain power drive home Ignatieff's point...
...These events were bookended by unsuccessful referendums on Quebec independence in 1980 and 1995-both politically traumatic experiences...
...So it could be said that much of the braying about the Liberals undermining democracy rings hollow...
...Seats in the House of Commons are allocated roughly in proportion to population, albeit with criteria less strict than in the U.S...
...There is also the legitimate question of whether the party as a whole should be condemned (and punished electorally), or whether blame ought to fall squarely on the shoulders of Jean Christien and his associates...
...TheLiberals'main rival, the Conservative Party (98 seats), has been inconsistent, not least because of an inability to break through in Quebec on a regular basis...
...The net effect has thus been a reduction in Ottawa's ability to carry out its responsibilities...
...The stage was set in the June 2004 elections that saw the Liberals lose most of the seats they held in the French parts of Quebec to the BQ...
...The opposition Conservative Party and Bloc Quebecois (BQ) were emboldened to try to bring Martin down...
...UNTIL NOW, Ottawa has been able to buy off the provinces with (usually financial) concessions...
...But the provinces gained leverage because they generally deliver the services under sharedcost arrangements...
...Were the Conservatives to come to power, the same would hold for Quebec or Southern Ontario...
...The Liberals need as much Quebec representation as possible to form a majority...
...Prime Minister Mulroney addressed the question of federalism with the 1987 Meech Lake Accord that was palatable to Quebec but failed to gain support from enough provinces to pass...
...Canada's inability to develop a satisfactory federal framework led Harvard scholar Michael Ignatieff to observe recently that the nation's politics is "provoking a systemic crisis, in which Canada backs its way, without fully intending it, into an ever more asymmetrical, and ever more unsustainable, fiscal crisis...
...The Conservatives hope to win seats there in order to form a plausible government...
...At a time when the country needs strong leadership, clarity of purpose and a vision of the future, the battered Liberals seem to be adrift...
...The question of how to govern the country has never really been fully settled...
...There are no signs, though, that the challenge of how to improve the governance of the country will disappear...
...Throughout Canada's close to 140 years as a country, the combination of a large land mass and relatively small population (about the size of California's) has created political dilemmas...
...In 1982 Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau thought he could resolve a host of outstanding issues by patriating the constitution from Britain and adding a Charter of Rights and Freedoms...
...As if that were not enough to feed tensions, a scandal labeled Adscam, involving extensive Liberal Party corruption in Quebec, with government funds used to combat separatist sentiment, reached a climax of sorts in May...
...With strong bases in both large provinces, the Liberal Party (currently 133 seats) has historically exploited its position very skillfully...
...That kept the NDP aligned with the Liberals for the critical May 19 budget vote, which was a confidence measure...
...But over the past year the vulnerability of Martin's minority government has encouraged others to come to negotiate...
...But the recent circus in Ottawa that nearly brought down Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin's minority government did once again lay bare fundamental structural problems that have been hobbling this parliamentary democracy...
...Given the regional nature of much of Canadian life, the influence of provinces outside of the central part of the country is limited...
...Such differences are supposed to be accommodated by a modus operandi that gives federal and provincial governments autonomy in some fields while compelling powersharing in others...
...To complicate matters, in the early 1990s it split into three parts and almost disappeared...
...Their failure among Quebecois voters proved the difference between a majority and a minority government...
...As the other provinces gradually became more assertive, they put forward their own demands...
...According to several public opinion polls, significant numbers of voters abandoned the Liberals because of corruption disclosures at the commission hearings...
...That could set the stage for a third independence referendum...
...The New Deal and subsequent Federal initiatives, as well as defense and national security needs, transformed the localism championed by Thomas Jefferson into a system dominated by Washington...
...The process offended many Quebecois, and the new emphasis on rights opened the way for court decisions that were more widely resented...
...Both the Tories under Brian Mulroney and the Parti Quebecois (PQ) in Quebec have used public funds to advance their policy objectives...
...The PQ's hopes hinge on several unknowns and a referendum is years away, but people are beginning to worry...
...Adding pockets of strength elsewhere, it has excelled at forming majority governments...
...The two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec, hold over half the 308 seats...
...Tales of illegal campaign contributions, undocumented cash passed around to cover campaign costs, phony government jobs for political operatives, bloated contracts awarded to Liberalfriendly firms, and cynical attempts to manipulate the political process titillated newspaper readers and television viewers for months, fostering widespread antipathy toward the Liberals, especially in Quebec...
...The PQ, dedicated to what it prefers to call the "sovereignist" cause, remains one of the two major parties in the province and is always poised to win an election if the Quebec Liberals (eponymous but organizationally distinct from the federal Liberals) falter...
...For example, predominantly Francophone Quebec, the second most populous province after Ontario, has grown increasingly conscious of its uniqueness...
...As a result, this spring Martin eliminated a $4.6 billion corporate tax reduction from the budget and agreed to spend the money on programs desired by the Left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP...
...Indeed, Canada's party system and representation scheme constitute a third factor in the evolution of its federalism...
...For decades the concept allowed Quebec privileges and powers unavailable to the other nine provinces...
...Canada's constitutional blueprint concentrated most important powers in a relatively strong federal government, and the scope of its activity actually expanded during the 20th century...
...A last-minute defection by Conservative front-bencher Belinda Stronach, whom Martin rewarded with a Cabinet post, led to a tie in the Commons that was broken by Speaker Peter Milliken in favor of the government...
...The Conservative leader, Albertan Stephen Harper, knows that if his party is to be a real contender for national leadership, it must not only succeed in Ontario but carve out a presence in Quebec...
...Over the years, however, the provinces have upgraded themselves at the expense of the central authority...
...Albertans frequently express resentment that their wealth is being spread around by Ottawa to bankroll the poorer provinces, while little attention is paid to their concerns...
...Offshore oil production has lately brought more revenue into Maritime coffers-a development that would arguably justify reducing their equalization sums...
Vol. 88 • May 2005 • No. 3
