With Miriam Smith CHAPTER OUTLINE THE BASICS GOVERNMENT IN FLUX

Transcription

1 Chapter 19 Canada 1

2 CHAPTER OUTLINE Government 2 Chapter 19 in Canada Flux Thinking about Canada The Evolution of the Canadian State Political Culture Political Participation The Canadian State Public Policy: Moving to the Right? Feedback CHAPTER 19 Canada With Miriam Smith THE BASICS Canada Size Population 9,984,670 sq. km (slightly larger than the United States) 33.4 million Ethnic composition British Isles 28%; France 25%; Other European 15%; Native Canadian 2%; Other 6%; Mixed 26% Religion Roman Catholic 43%; Protestant 28%; Muslim 4%; Other and None 25% GDP per capita $38,200 Currency $1 CAD = $1 (2/1/08) Capital Head of State Ottawa Queen Elizabeth II represented by Governor General Michaelle Jean (2005) Head of Government Stephen Harper (2006) GOVERNMENT IN FLUX The evening of 19 May 2005 produced some highly unusual drama in the usually politically staid Canada. The House of Commons had to vote on the annual budget that had been proposed by Prime Minister Paul Martin and his ruling Liberal Party. Martin s government was in rough shape. It had been elected less than a year before with only 135 of the 308 seats. The Liberals thus had to form a minority government, which is far more common in Canada than it is in Great Britain, even though Canada s parliamentary system is modeled on the one in Great Britain. As we saw in Chapter 2 of the main text, minority governments are always vulnerable because the opposition parties can band together and turn the cabinet out if it loses a vote of confidence. The government s situation only got worse. Support for the Liberals had already been shrinking for some time as governments led by Jean Chrétien and then Martin struggled to solve many of the country s social and economic problems. Then, in late 2004, a series of revelations came out about alleged scandals involving top Liberal leaders who seemed to have given kickbacks to some of the

3 Chapter 19 Canada 3 party s financial backers. And since the Speaker of the House does not vote unless there is a tie, the party lost one vote as a result. By elections to replace members who had died or resigned had also cost the Liberals two seats, which it seemed to need to keep its grip on power. American: A Misleading Term As mentioned in Chapters 3 and 16, American is often incorrectly used to describe a citizen of the United States. Canadians (and Mexicans and many others), of course, are Americans, too. Many Canadians resent the fact that Americans think that the term applies to themselves alone and view it as a sign of what they think is American arrogance. But because we lack a better term for use in academic prose, let alone everyday conversation, American will refer to residents of the United States in the rest of this chapter. The often-confrontational Conservative (Tory) Party leader, Stephen Harper, threatened to force a vote of confidence at a time of his choosing. If Martin lost the vote of confidence, that would result in new parliamentary elections barely a year after the one in Harper and his colleagues decided to turn a debate on the budget that evening into a vote of confidence. He was certain he had the votes. But the outcome was not so clear cut. Martin and the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) agreed on a budget deal; that would add new social expenditures in exchange for the NDP s acquiescence to more marketoriented policies that the business community supported. Two days before the vote, a rising star among the Conservatives, Belinda Stronach, agreed to join the Liberals and accepted a seat in the cabinet. Stronach is an unusual character in Canadian politics. She is a glamorous heiress whose disaffection with the Tories included the breakup of a personal relationship with the party s deputy leader. It seemed that Martin was still a vote short, and all would hinge on how Chuck Cadman (who died less than two months later), the one independent, chose to vote. As the debate began, Cadman confessed that he still hadn t made up his mind. Finally, a half hour before the vote, he decided to support the budget and possibly save the government. When the votes were all counted, it was a tie. The Liberal speaker then cast the deciding vote. Martin survived. But not for long. That November, testimony to the Gomery Commission investigating corruption inside the Liberal Party cost it any remaining support among the opposition parties and at the end of the month, it was lost a vote of confidence. Because of the upcoming holidays, elections were delayed until 23 January The Liberals lost six percent of the vote and thirty seats, while the Conservatives gained 26 seats and almost seven percent in the electorate as a whole. That still left Canadian politics in flux because the Tories had won only 124 seats or barely 40 percent of the total. Harper became Prime Minister leading the smallest minority government in Canadian history. The new government faced good times and bad. In its first two years in power it saw its economy boom. The business climate in general and soaring oil prices brought the Canadian dollar (sometimes called the loonie) into parity with the American greenback. On the other hand, Canadian troops found themselves in combat in Afghanistan, one of the first times they had done so since World War II. Polls conducted in early 2008 confirmed that the stalemate between the two largest parties continued. Most showed that the Liberals, now led by Stéphane Dion, would have a narrow lead over the Conservatives were an election to be held at that time. However, no election is required before 2011, although it is hard to image Harper or any conservative government lasting that long. THINKING ABOUT CANADA One of the more perplexing relationships in the world today is that between Canada and the

4 4 Chapter 19 Canada United States. The two countries share a great deal, including the world s longest history of peace and longest peaceful border. Indeed, the last hint of hostilities between Canada and the United States occurred thirty years before Canada was formally created in a series of skirmishes exaggeratedly known as the Aroostook War over what is still the leastpopulated and least-developed county in the state of Maine. Formalities at the border were perfunctory at best; even with the heightened security after 9/11. Canadian and American citizens still only needed to present a driver s license until the U.S. Department of Homeland Security started requiring a passport in The puzzling nature of the relationship lies not in geopolitics but in how the two peoples deal with each other or don t as the case may be. About three-quarters of all Canadians live within one hundred miles of the border with the United States. Virtually everyone watches American television. Rogers, the leading cable company, offers all the major channels one finds offered by similar services in the United States, plus Canadian and a handful of European networks. News about the United States is a fixture in all Canadian mass media except for a handful of Internet sites that only carry Canadian content. Many Canadians travel frequently to the United States, often to shop for consumer goods because prices were much cheaper south of the border until both dollars reached parity in early Hockey is Canada s national sport, but all but six of the National Hockey League teams play in the United States. But very few Americans know much or care much about Canada. Few of us travel there. Almost none of us have access to Canadian media. When I moved to Waterville, Maine, in 1975, I was delighted to learn that the local cable system carried a French station that showed La soirée du hockey au Canada each Saturday. But by the time I moved to Washington, D.C. in 1992, the French-speaking population in central Maine had declined precipitously, and the French station was long gone. I now have several hundred channels on my cable system; none are Canadian. One of our local NPR stations carries As It Happens, the CBC newsmagazine that was the model for All Things Considered. The program was not available in thirty states, including seven that border Canada. During the time it took to write this chapter, nothing on Canada appeared in either the New York Times or Washington Post other than baseball scores and stories about the continued stalemate between the NHL and its players union. The Basics In other words, basic or background information on Canada is at least as important a topic as it would be for any country covered in a comparative politics course for American students for one simple reason. We know so little about it. Geography First, Canada is a huge country, about 5 percent larger than the United States. Only Indonesia and Russia are larger. But with only thirty-three million residents, Canada is sparsely populated. As noted earlier, nearly three out of four Canadians live near the border of the United States. There is a simple reason for that: Northern Canada s inhospitable climate. Think about the territory of Nunavut, which was created in 1999 as a homeland for many of Canada s aboriginal people. It is a vast territory, taking up one-fifth of Canada, but has only about 29,000 residents. The largest town, Iqalut, has a population of 6,000. Much of Canada lies above the Arctic Circle. In June 2005, the town of Cambridge Bay in Nunavut only broke 50 degrees Fahrenheit one day a week. Canada s equivalent of the Super Bowl, the Gray Cup, is played in November. Outdoor football games after that are unimaginable. Many Canadians enjoy ice skating on the Rideau Canal separating the national capital, Ottawa, from its sibling city, Hull. In all my years of living in Washington, D.C. no one has been able to skate on the Potomac. Diversity Canadian politics is defined by the country s diversity. As we will see in the next section, Canada is the result of the amalgamation of two sets of colonies one English, the other French. Even more than the effect race has on politics in the United States, language is at the heart of politics in Canada to this day. About one-fourth of all Canadians speak French as their native tongue. Most francophones also

5 Chapter 19 Canada 5 speak English, although many do not do so well. Almost all francophones live in Quebec, which was the heart of New France, as the French colony in North America was known. Some French speakers live in the Maritime provinces (home of the Acadians, most of whom were forced to move to Louisiana) and a few others live in the west. However, Quebec is the home of most Canadian French speakers and thus has become the center of disputes over Canada s very existence for the last 150 years. Like most industrial democracies, Canada has become a place where many nonwhite immigrants have moved over the last few decades. They come from three main regions the Caribbean, China, and South Asia. Little Mosque on the Prairie Like people to the south of the border, Canadians are struggling to deal with their newfound cultural diversity. One of the most innovative attempts to do so is the wonderfully funny sitcom, Little Mosque on the Prairie, which debuted on the nationally owned Canadian Broadcasting Company in The show is set in a small town that somehow has a small, multi-racial community of Muslims and a significant number of long-term residents who oppose further immigration. The series begins with the arrival of a new imam from Toronto who has been asked to help the community grow. As befits all sitcoms, the very handsome lawyer-turned-imam falls in love with the beautiful daughter of the leaders of the community. The series pokes fun not only at the Canadian political culture, but at the Muslim community as well. A few episodes are available at the normal online video sites. Negotiations to air the program on network television in the United States were still underway as these lines were written. Altogether, the visible minorities (as Canadians call them) make up about 6 percent of the population, but within a decade or two, Toronto and Vancouver could easily become cities with majority minority populations. At this point, the new face of Canada has not become a political issue. However, since most new immigrants have chosen to be English speakers, the shift in the balance of the population might further alienate francophone Canadians. Key Questions Canada is unusual among industrialized democracies in that it has multiple sources of diversity linguistic, racial, ethnic, and regional. On balance, those differences have been handled by both the authorities and average citizens fairly well. Nonetheless, these identity-based conflicts tend to define politics in Canada. However, unlike the United States, Canada has never had to resort to a civil war to settle its differences. Unlike many European countries, the Canadian state has never had the power to enforce a common identity. Today, many Canadians blend several different definitions of their national identity. Many French-speaking Canadians, especially in Quebec, define themselves as both Quebecers and Canadians. Aboriginal peoples put forth their own distinctive national identities. Many English-speaking Canadians, although they may define themselves simply as Canadian, have strong loyalties to their regional and other roots. As a society now populated largely by settlers from Europe and their descendents, Canadian politics has been shaped first by the conflicts between them and aboriginal peoples. Also, because parts of Canada were colonized by both the French and the British, there are longstanding conflicts between French- and Englishspeaking Canadians. Many other ethnic groups played an important role in Canada s development as the country grew, including people whose roots were in southern and eastern Europe and, now, those whose families have come from all over the world.

6 6 Chapter 19 Canada Another Question of Language People in the United States and Canada have reached different conclusions about how to call the peoples who lived there before the European colonists arrived. In both countries, the initial preferred term was Indian, though that made no sense given the fact that Columbus, from whom the name came, thought he had arrived in India rather than what is now the Dominican Republic. In the United States, most observers use the term Native Americans, which could also be seen as reflecting the biases of the first box in this chapter. Canadians are happier using such terms as first nations or the more generic aboriginals. No term works well, nor does any label help explain the way people on both sides of the border all but exterminated the men and women they encountered when they arrived. Indeed, the history of North and South America cannot be understood without considering the way Europeans destroyed the preexisting civilizations they encountered when they came ashore from their sailing ships. Those identity-based conflicts have been intense indeed. However, in contrast to many European countries, class politics has not played a very important role in Canada, although they have played a greater role there than in the United States. In response to these factors, some have called Canada a postmodern state in recognition of the many peoples and nations that live together reasonably harmoniously. In contrast, the classical modern nation-state embodies the idea that one people or one nation live together in a single state. While this modern definition has rarely been perfectly realized in practice, it is a very common national myth in many of the other countries typically included in introductory textbooks on comparative politics. In contrast, Canadian politics often concerns conflicts over the very definition of the nation. In short, we will ask the same kinds of questions political scientists pose for all democracies. How did democracy emerge in Canada? How does its state today reflect the divisions of the past? What policies does its government pursue? But we will also be forced to consider some other questions that will strike American readers, in particular, as unusual. o Why does Canada have more problems with national unity than most established democracies? o In what ways are regionalism and nationalism important in Canadian politics? o What explains the high level of voter volatility in Canada that led to massive swings in popular support for the major parties and the birth of several new ones since the 1960s? o Why are Canadians apparently alienated from their political institutions? But, at the same time, why are they reluctant to engage in major constitutional change? THE EVOLUTION OF THE CANADIAN STATE Americans who know anything about Canada understand that both countries were British colonies. But that is where the similarities end. The United States broke free of the United Kingdom in the late eighteenth century. It would be almost another century before Canada began to break its ties with the U.K. Even today, the queen of England is officially the head of state in Canada. To be sure, London has no impact on day-to-day politics in Ottawa. Nonetheless, the queen s portrait is still on Canadian stamps and currency. For all intents and purposes, Canada is an independent state, as sovereign as the United States or France or Germany. However, given its ongoing relationship to the British Crown, the evolution of its state deserves extended attention here. Colonialism The Canadian state cannot be understood without considering its colonial past. The territory of what is now Canada was originally

7 Chapter 19 Canada 7 inhabited by between one and two million aboriginal people, most of whom were exterminated by European colonizers ( ). Contrary to Canada s current peaceful reputation, its early history was shaped by bloody conflict between the Europeans and aboriginal nations and among the European colonizers themselves. As in the thirteen colonies to the south, the British and French felt the need to destroy the culture of the people they encountered when they arrived. As noted earlier, they did not do so as completely as English colonists to the south, and Canada has probably done better than America at integrating what remains of the indigenous population into their modern society, state, and culture. TABLE 19.1: The Early History of Canada YEAR EVENT John Cabot discovers Newfoundland Jean Cartier begins exploration of St. Lawrence River and its region Formal creation of New France Formation of the Hudson s Bay Company Battle of the Plains of Abraham British North America Act For good or ill, the key to the evolution of modern Canada lay in the relationship between English and French colonialists. Oddly enough, neither arrived as a result of their own explorers. The English got there first when the Italian, John Cabot (really Giovanni Caboto), landed in Newfoundland in (See table 19.1.) Less than thirty years later, the French began to lay claim to what became Canada when another Italian in their employ, Giovanni de Verazzano (for whom New York City s bridge is named), mapped much of the eastern coastline of North America and audaciously claimed it all for France. The real French presence began a decade later when Jean Cartier began a series of expeditions up the St. Lawrence River, which culminated in the formal creation of New France just before the end of the century. Even though Cartier pushed French claims well inland and helped create what were later to become Quebec City and Montreal, the major French beachhead was in today s Nova Scotia. By 1682, French explorers (many of whom were priests) had traveled down into what became the United States and laid claim to the entire Mississippi River and all the territory whose waters drained into it, which, of course, included most of the western half of the continent. But the French were not going to be alone for long. The English realized that its southern colonies would be threatened by a strong French presence in North America. So, using French explorers (nationality was not always a key issue in those days), it established a presence in Hudson s Bay in The French later took over the outpost but was forced to give it up in 1713 along with Newfoundland and Nova Scotia as a result of the Treaty of Utrecht, which had more to do with politics in Europe than in North America. Over the next years, England and France both built forts on the Atlantic coast. The tensions between the two European powers reached their height during what Americans call the French and Indian wars of the 1750s and 1760s, which were really a part of the struggle between them back in Europe that was known there as the Seven Years War. In Canada, the key struggle was over the city of Quebec, culminating in the Battle of the Plains of Abraham in Both commanders the French General Louis Montcalm and the British Major General James Wolfe were killed in what turned into a British victory. The battle has more importance in historical mythology than in reality, since the real loss of New France to the British occurred not on the battlefield but at the negotiating table when the French traded away Quebec which Voltaire called a few acres of snow for concessions from the British at the Treaty of Paris in In 1774, the British passed the Quebec Act, which, in some ways, was the first distinct society clause of the Canadian constitution. Rather than brutally deporting the Canadiens of Quebec as they had done with the Acadians of Nova Scotia twenty years earlier, the British granted some local autonomy to the new members of its empire by recognizing Quebec s civil law system, the seigneurial system, and the privileged position of the Roman Catholic Church.

8 8 Chapter 19 Canada These French institutions were at odds with British practice, differences that were exacerbated by the American Revolution. One of the important consequences of the revolution was the substantial influx of Loyalists, who fled north and settled in Nova Scotia, Quebec, and what is now Ontario. These new immigrants soon demanded that Canada should have a local assembly, as did the other colonies of British North America, which were in the process of fighting for their independence. In 1791, the British divided the single colony of Canada into Upper and Lower Canada and granted each a legislative assembly. The colonial assemblies of this period were far from democratic. The governor of each colony dominated the assembly, a situation that was complicated in Lower Canada by conflict between French and English and in Upper Canada by the arrival of new immigrants who were reluctant to accept domination by the established elites. Across what was left of British North America, the elected assemblies pushed for political control against the British-appointed governors and the elite-dominated executive councils, which did not view themselves as responsible to the voters. The struggle for responsible government was a contest for democratic accountability, although, it should be noted, only male property owners could vote. These conflicts culminated in the failed rebellions of in Upper and Lower Canada. Responsible Government The Durham Report, issued in the wake of the rebellions, recommended responsible government for the colonies along the lines of parliamentary practices being developed in the United Kingdom. Throughout the 1840s, responsible government was indeed granted. The broad outlines of the party system began to emerge as conflict centered on the cleavage between the Conservatives, who represented the elites, and the Reformers, who represented the interests of small farmers. The Durham Report also recommended that Upper and Lower Canada be joined together as one colony in order to assimilate French Canadians by immersing them in a larger political unit dominated by British settlers. This happened with the passage of the Act of Union in In order to better effect the assimilation DEMOCRATIZATION In Canada DEMOCRATIZATION IN Canada occurred in many of the same ways that it did in Great Britain and the United States. It happened gradually both in terms of incorporating more and more of the electorate and handing more and more power to institutions directly elected by the people. As in the United States as well, democracy grew as the country expanded westward, adding new provinces. Unlike the United States, the country s divisions never came close to producing a bloody conflict like the Civil War. of the French Canadians in the new colony, representation in the assembly of Canada was based on equal numbers of representatives for Canada East (Quebec) and Canada West (Ontario), an arrangement that underrepresented Canada East s population in the assembly. Yet the colonial designs of Lord Durham were subverted in practice by politicians who instituted a power-sharing regime between the representatives of Canada East and Canada West. Many have seen this arrangement as the beginning of Canadian federalism. Canada East and Canada West retained their own administrations. Because of this dual administrative structure, there were two ministers for each department. Leaders from Canada East and Canada West often functioned as co-prime ministers, and measures that affected one section more than the other would require a double majority of the representatives of each side. However, by the 1850s, many in Canada West were increasingly opposed to this arrangement. Its population was growing so fast that the equal division of legislative seats left Canada West underrepresented in the assembly. The Reform Party of Canada West, led by George Brown, called for an end to the power-sharing arrangement so that Canada West could escape the domination by the French. Furthermore, during the 1860s, the Canadian legislature was increasingly deadlocked, which made the formation of a stable government difficult.

9 Chapter 19 Canada 9 Confederation and the British North America Act Along with these internal dynamics, there were a number of external trends that accelerated the shift to confederation in British colonial policy increasingly promoted the union of the remaining colonies to counter the perceived American threat to their interests in North America. The British wanted to ensure that the burden of defending the colonies from American aggression would fall on the colonists themselves. These factors led colonial politicians from the other British colonies Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick to join Canada in negotiations on confederation at the 1864 Charlottetown Conference. These negotiations led to the British North America Act (BNA Act) of 1867, which created the Canadian confederation. Only three colonies agreed to join at the time: Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick. PEI initially declined to join the confederation, but entered it in By that time, Manitoba (1870) and British Columbia (1871) were already members. Alberta and Saskatchewan were separated from the Northwest Territory to form provinces in The last original colony to join the confederation was Newfoundland in It was also the only province to join Canada with the direct consent of its citizens in a referendum. The confederation agreement was negotiated by the leading politicians in each of the colonies, who, you will recall, were elected only by property-owning men. Nonetheless, opposition as well as government deputies represented their colonies at the confederation conferences so that the broadest possible range of political opinion would be taken into account. The only significant party from Canada that was not represented at the conferences was the Rouges, the opposition francophone liberals from Lower Canada, led by A. A. Dorion. The Rouges opposed the confederation agreement because they feared that francophones would be swamped by anglophones in the new, larger political unit. The other factions from the Canadian colony were the Conservatives, led by Sir John A. Macdonald, who would be Canada s first prime minister, the Bleus of Canada East, led by George Étienne Cartier, who allied with Canada West s Tories in support of confederation, and the Reform Party, led by George Brown, who still represented the small farmers of Canada West and had long sought to streamline the creaking structure of Canada s government. For these politicians, the solution to the political and legislative deadlock in Canada was the establishment of a federal system in which political authority is shared between different levels of government whose existence are constitutionally guaranteed. Federalism allowed Canada West to escape what Brown s Reform Party viewed as French- Canadian domination by separating Canada West and Canada East into two separate provinces. At the same time, French Canadians would obtain a certain independence in their own province, in which the francophone majority would be in control. For the Maritime provinces, federalism permitted self-government along with the economic, military, and political benefits of a larger union. Provisions of the British North America Act The federal system set out in the BNA Act was far more centralized than Canada is today. This can be seen in three key features. First, most important levers of economic and fiscal control were in the hands of the federal government. It alone had the power to tax and spend. It also kept control of trade and commerce, banking, and the currency. Only education, culture, and local matters were given to the provinces. Second, the act contained several features based on British colonial practice, which gave the federal government the upper hand over the provinces. For example, the lieutenant governor (chief executive) of each province was appointed by the federal government, just as the colonial governors had been appointed by London. The lieutenant governor had the power to reserve or delay provincial legislation for up to one year, during which time the federal government could disallow or reject the legislation. These powers of reservation and disallowance have never been repealed. It is all but impossible to imagine the federal government disallowing provincial legislation today. Indeed, the power of reservation has not been used since 1961 and the power of disallowance since 1943.

10 10 Chapter 19 Canada Third, the BNA Act contained important religious guarantees for the British minority in Quebec and for the French minority in Ontario. Each was guaranteed the right to education in their own language in schools run by their own religion s clergy. In contrast to the United States, where the separation of church and state is sacrosanct, there are many specific rights given to religious institutions in Canadian provinces. In the nineteenth century, the guarantee of the right to a religious education implied the protection of general linguistic and cultural rights as well. In Quebec, in particular, the Catholic Church controlled the schools and provided the main protection for the survival of French language and culture. These religious guarantees varied across the provinces because they joined the confederation at different times. Nonetheless, they share an important common purpose: to protect key minority rights. In the BNA Act, the federal government was assigned the responsibility of enforcing these rights. In reality, the federal government never took on this role. Today, the protection of minority rights against governments (federal and provincial) is also the job of the courts. The BNA Act did not say much about the institutions of parliamentary government. It simply stated that the new united Canada was to have a system of government similar in principle to that of the United Kingdom. The upper house of Parliament, the Senate, was to be appointed by the federal government to provide representation for each province and region. By requiring senators to hold $4,000 of real property in the province from which they were appointed, the fathers of the confederation also wanted to ensure that the Senate would act as a check on the democratic impulses of the popularly elected House of Commons. Senate seats were not apportioned equally between provinces. As new provinces were added, representation became ever more unequal. Ontario and Quebec were each treated as a region and had the same number of Senate seats. However, Newfoundland, which joined the confederation much later, had six Senate seats, giving the Maritimes a total of thirty Senate seats while Western Canada had only twenty-four, split between the four provinces of the West. Unlike the United States, Canada s independence from Britain was not achieved quickly as a result of a revolution. Instead, Canada s confederation was created peacefully and encouraged by the British government itself. Most importantly, the confederation did not mark independence from the British Crown, although Canada (like the United Kingdom s other largely white colonies) soon became a self-governing dominion in which the British had no impact on domestic policy making. There is no analogue in the BNA Act to the We the People of the American experience. Nonetheless, the BNA Act and the U.S. Constitution were negotiated by politicians who were democratically elected by the standards of the day even though neither was submitted to the voters for direct ratification. As in the United States, the leaders of the confederation were sometimes eloquent when they spoke of the new country they were creating. Sir George Étienne Cartier, the leader of the Bleus from Quebec, spoke of the creation of a new political nationality that would be composed of people of different backgrounds. Cartier did not mention Canada s aboriginal people, who were not consulted about the creation of this new country on their traditional territory, and he did not mention other ethnic groups in Canada, such as African Canadians, who had already settled in Ontario and Nova Scotia by the time of confederation. Cartier s hope for the creation of a new political nationality from Canada s diversity would be tested in the years that followed. The Evolution of the Federal System Although the fathers of the confederation may have intended that the federal government would have the upper hand in the new federation, there were a number of decentralizing pressures that soon drove power in the direction of the provinces. These pressures were economic, legal, and political. The developing Canadian economy was very different from region to region. By the end of the nineteenth century, industrialization was under way in Ontario and Quebec. The Prairie provinces depended on agriculture, particularly wheat, which was grown for export. British Columbia s economy was based on natural resource exploitation such as forestry, mining,

11 Chapter 19 Canada 11 and fishing. The Maritime provinces were also resource dependent. The beginnings of industrial development in the Maritimes were cut off by its distance from U.S. markets and the development of a transportation system that favored central Canada. Even agriculture varied greatly across the country, with the prairies reliant on a single crop while Ontario and Quebec practiced mixed agriculture. Some scholars have argued that the regional diversity of Canada s economy increased the assertiveness of provincial governments. Manufacturers, resource companies, and farmers tended to look to their provincial governments for economic assistance, which often championed them against the federal government. In other words, the federal government s economic policies whatever they were were bound to alienate one part of the country or another. The legal factors that led to the decentralization of the federal system were the decisions of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC), a British court that acted as Canada s highest appeals court until As the scope and size of government activities expanded over the years and as Canada transformed from a largely agrarian country to a modern industrial nation, many jurisdictional conflicts arose between provincial and federal levels of government. The JCPC consistently ruled in favor of the provinces with regard to many key provisions of the BNA Act. For example, the JCPC placed many areas of modern social policy, including unemployment insurance, contributory old age pensions, and health care, in provincial hands. In addition, the JCPC restricted the federal government s broad powers in the BNA Act, such as the residual power clause and control over trade and commerce. The JCPC decisions were viewed very differently in English-speaking Canada and in Quebec. Quebecers tended to see the decisions as reaffirming and enforcing the provinces powers and jurisdiction. In English-speaking Canada, the decisions were viewed as impeding the development of a modern interventionist federal state. A final important factor leading to decentralization was the rise of provincial rights movements. Such movements sometimes defended the interests of economically disadvantaged regions such as the Maritime Rights Movement of the 1920s. In Quebec, provincial governments consistently defended provincial jurisdiction. Quebec governments viewed themselves as defenders of the French- Canadian people and, as such, viewed confederation as a partnership of French and English. Regionalism and linguistic conflicts thus worked to reinforce decentralization. Deadlock and Its Solution By the time of the Great Depression in the 1930s, control over social policy had been placed in the hands of the provinces by the JCPC. However, they did not have the money to pay for new initiatives such as unemployment insurance. Many social democrats, especially in English-speaking Canada, called for state intervention to deal with the economic and social problems created by the Depression. Yet neither the provincial nor federal governments could act because of the constitutional and fiscal deadlock. Over the course of the 1930s and 1940s, two solutions were found to this problem, which had a profound influence on the course of modern Canadian federalism. The first solution was the transfer of more power from the provincial to the federal government by amending the BNA Act, which required the consent of the provinces. Unemployment insurance was made a federal responsibility in In 1951, an agreement was reached to turn the making of policy regarding contributory old age pensions a joint federal-provincial undertaking. The second solution was the use of the federal spending power in areas of provincial jurisdiction. While the JCPC had placed many areas of modern social policy in provincial hands, the federal government retained the power to spend money as it saw fit. This federal power meant that it could transfer money to the provinces to fund social programs and that it could do the same to individuals, even if the policy was formally under provincial jurisdiction. There are many examples of such practices in modern Canadian social policy. The health care system, for example, is under provincial jurisdiction although the federal government sends substantial sums of money to them to help cover the cost. Without federal spending, it is unlikely that all provinces could have afforded the universal coverage of which Canadians are

12 12 Chapter 19 Canada justifiably proud given the situation in the United States, which leaves at least 15 percent of the population with no insurance at all. Many of these programs are managed through first ministers conferences at which the federal and provincial leaders meet on an annual basis. A major question arises with such transfers. Can the federal government attach conditions to the money it turns over to the provinces? In the area of health care, the federal government sets conditions such as universality and portability. However, critics of the federal conditions argue that it should not have the right to set conditions on the delivery of provincial programs through the use of its spending power. After all, what is the point of assigning a certain policy area to provincial jurisdiction if the federal government can use the power of the purse to determine provincial policies? Defenders of the federal conditions argue that such conditions are necessary to retain a level playing field in social service provision across Canada and to ensure that Canadians can retain their access to government services when they move between provinces. Decentralization of Federalism in the Modern Era During World War II, power was recentralized and led to the rise of the modern interventionist state after the hostilities ended. (See table 19.2.) This period of centralization resulted in the creation of many modern social programs such as universal health care coverage and unemployment insurance. However, since the 1970s, the pendulum has swung back in the direction of provincial power. Politically, the major change over the last forty years has been the rebirth of Quebec nationalism. Since the Quiet Revolution began in 1960, Quebec nationalism has centered on the use of the provincial government, rather than the Catholic Church, to promote the interests of the francophone majority in Quebec. TABLE 19.2: Events and Trends in Canada since Confederation YEAR s 1960s EVENT Expansion to present-day boundaries Federal responsibility for social policy Quiet Revolution in Quebec Pierre Trudeau becomes prime minister Official Languages Act Passed PQ wins first election Referendum in Quebec fails Patriation of the constitution Negotiation and collapse of Meech Lake Accord Failure of Charlottetown Accord Failure of second Quebec referendum Whether led by Liberals or the Parti Québecois (PQ), Quebec governments have demanded more power at the provincial level throughout the country. While previous Quebec governments had made similar demands, in recent years, Quebec has pursued policies centered on the provision of social services, which are quite different from the laissez-faire attitude of earlier provincial governments. That policy direction also placed it on a collision course with the federal government over social and economic policy jurisdiction as well as its own status inside Canada or outside it. As we will see in more detail later, the Quebec and broader federal questions were magnified in paradoxical ways when Pierre Elliot Trudeau became prime minister in On the one hand, the francophone Trudeau symbolized the growing demands of his community. On the other hand, the dashing Trudeau was the most dynamic prime minister the country had had in decades.

13 Chapter 19 Canada 13 After his time in office, the acceleration of globalization in the eighties and nineties and the advent of free trade in North America has meant that East-West economic ties within Canada are weakening. Today, North-South ties between Canada s regions and adjacent regions of the United States are often of more importance than the traditional intra-canadian flow of trade and commerce. These economic changes tend to reinforce decentralization. The diverse regions of Canada do not see their economic well-being as necessarily tied to Canada as a whole, let alone to the policies of the federal government. Another important economic factor has been the changes in federal fiscal and economic policy. From the 1980s on, federal governments have been committed to cutting government spending in order to deal with the debt and deficit. Such policies have weakened the capacity of the federal government to intervene in the economy. The decline in the level of federal transfers to the provinces weakens the federal government s ability to impose policy conditions on the provinces in areas such as health care. The Constitutional Problem From the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, the most contentious issue in Canadian politics was the constitution. In order to understand this debate, it is useful to examine its historical origins briefly. The BNA Act did not contain a provision for amending it by Canadians alone. On several occasions, the British tried to convince Canada to take over responsibility for the BNA Act and to devise a formula for amending it. Progress was delayed by a vexing dilemma. Any deal would have to specify when the federal government and provinces could act unilaterally and when they had to cooperate in changing either public policy or constitutional provisions. And once Quebec separatism became an issue, reaching such a deal became all but impossible. The lack of an amending formula can be seen as the result of tensions that have marked Canadian history since before confederation. Some have always viewed Canada as a partnership of its two founding peoples English and French. Others have seen Canada as a compact of equal provinces. Still others think of the country as more than the sum of its parts, as one nation. Not surprisingly, the two founding nations view has been defended by the government of Quebec, the equal provinces view has been preferred by most of the other provinces, and the one nation view has been endorsed by the federal government. From 1867 until the mid-1960s, the unresolved problem of the amending formula was not a major issue in Canadian politics. When amendments were required, the federal government requested them from Britain. All of this changed, however, with the rise of modern nationalism in Quebec after 1960 and with the resurgence of regionalism in Western Canada during the 1970s. While the threat posed by Quebecer nationalism is at the heart of the problem here for our purposes, we should at least note that pressures for provincial power were coming from most of the country. Quebec governments of the 1960s and 1970s began to demand equality or independence in the Canadian federation. This demand meant that Quebecers wanted to be treated as equal partners in the confederation and that they wanted the province to have more power to protect Quebec society as a French-speaking island in a North American sea of English speakers. Quebecois nationalism continued to grow during the 1960s and even resulted in a small number of violent actions, including the kidnap and assassination of a federal cabinet minister. Under Trudeau s leadership, the federal government tried to respond by taking a number of steps, two of which are central to this section of the chapter. First, the federal government moved to open up the federal public service to francophones by passing the Official Languages Act (1969). It stated that Canada s official languages are English and French and that federal government services must be provided in both where numbers warrant. As the act has evolved, it now means, for instance, that all official documents are published in both languages and all senior civil servants must be bilingual. Second, the government proposed a new constitutional deal that, it hoped, would check the growth of Quebec nationalism, undercut regional political loyalties, and cement a sense of Canadian national identity. That was not to happen because of events in Quebec. Frustration there continued to grow in the form of support for provincial sovereignty if

14 14 Chapter 19 Canada not outright independence as proposed by the PQ. When the party won in 1976 under the leadership of René Lévesque, independence became a real possibility. The PQ refused to run candidates in federal elections, which meant that supporters of Quebecer nationalism had no voice in policy making at the national level. Even more menacing for Canada as a whole was Lévesque s call for a referendum on sovereignty-association, which would grant Quebec de facto independence in an as-yet illdefined relationship with the rest of the country. The call for such a referendum in 1980 came as no surprise since it had been a centerpiece of PQ platforms for a decade. However, the PQ lost, with only 40 percent of the province s voters supporting the plan. Following the defeat of the referendum, the federal government reopened constitutional negotiations with the provinces as it had promised during the campaign. All but Quebec consented to a constitutional deal with the federal government, which resulted in the patriation of the constitution two years later. Quebecois nationalism and the rise of regionalism in the rest of the country meant that two particularly contentious issues that had to be negotiated were the amendment provisions and the adoption or entrenchment of a Charter of Rights. The agreement specified a formula that would require the consent of two-thirds of the provinces and the federal government for most constitutional amendments. For some issues, such as changes to the Senate and to the amending formula itself, unanimous consent would be required. The entrenchment of the charter was opposed by most of the provinces not because they opposed the guarantee of basic human rights, but because they feared that it would limit their authority. Quebec, in particular, opposed the strong language rights guarantees of the charter in the area of education, which would have set constitutional limits on Quebec s jurisdiction over language policies in the schools. The compromise permitted legislatures to opt out of certain sections of the charter using the notwithstanding clause, to be discussed in more detail later in this chapter. Quebec s opposition to the 1982 constitutional patriation was based on several factors. Quebec governments since the sixties had sought a revision of the division of powers and an end to the use of the federal spending power in areas of provincial jurisdiction. Aside from the entrenchment of the charter, there were no substantial changes to the division of powers in the 1982 constitution. Furthermore, as we have seen, Quebec opposed some of the provisions of the Charter of Rights and wanted a veto over certain types of constitutional change. Patriation did not settle the constitutional issue. Quebec nationalists claimed that the constitution had been altered without Quebec s consent and that this violated the spirit of federalism and undermined its democratic legitimacy. Federalists argued that it was unrealistic to have expected Lévesque s prosovereignty government to have accepted the 1982 agreement and that Quebec s reluctance alone should not be enough to block what they thought would be a permanent settlement to Canada s constitutional concerns. With the election of a Liberal government in Quebec in 1985 and a Progressive Conservative government in Ottawa in 1984, the constitutional issue was revived by the government of Brian Mulroney. In particular, hopes were high because the Tories had won Quebec in 1984 by promising to reopen the constitutional agreement and to amend the document so as to secure Quebec s consent. The result of this fresh round of negotiations was the Meech Lake Accord, which was negotiated in Among other things, it would have recognized Quebec as a distinct society within Canada, set limits on the use of the federal spending power in areas of provincial jurisdiction, and expanded the kinds of constitutional amendment that would require unanimous consent of the provinces. The deadline for ratification of the Meech Lake Accord was set for June During the three years after the agreement was signed, opposition developed from many quarters. Western Canadians were dissatisfied that the accord contained no new provision for them. In particular, the West was increasingly interested in Senate reform that would have given the West a stronger voice in the upper chamber. Aboriginal Canadians were strongly opposed to the Meech Lake Accord because the accord ignored their concerns about the constitution and their overall status.