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"Federalism and Diversity: The Canada Experience"
Notes for an address by
the
President of the Privy Council and
Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs
the Honourable Stéphane Dion
at El Colegio de Mexico
Mexico City, Mexico
October 1, 1999
As a Canadian minister, I am very honoured by
this invitation to talk about federalism at the prestigious Colegio de Mexico.
It is a natural topic, in my opinion, since North America is the only continent
formed solely of federations, which are closely linked together through a
dynamic trade agreement, as well as through many other political and personal
linkages.
It's no accident that the three heads of
government, Messrs. Zedillo, Clinton and Chrétien, will be in Canada, at Mont-Tremblant
to be exact, from October 5 to 8, for a major international conference where the
world's federations will come together to share their experiences.
Federalism is a system of government that has a
number of advantages in terms of governance, management of the economy,
democratic life, and influence on the international scene. The world's largest
democracies are federations, as are many of the most prosperous countries. But
the true genius of this form of government lies in its ability to reconcile
diversity in unity. And it is this ability that I want to talk about today.
Because federalism is flexible and can adapt to
different contexts, our countries have obviously developed different approaches
and mechanisms. I don't claim to be a specialist on your federation, so I will
limit my remarks to describing how we in Canada try to reconcile diversity in
unity. I will leave it to you to determine which ideas are applicable and which
are not to the very different context of Mexico. I hope you will find my remarks
to be of some relevance in your search for what you call the New Federalism in
Mexico.
Unity in diversity the Canadian way has two
dimensions: first, the guarantees we give to individual rights and freedoms, and
second, our federal system. Yesterday, at an international conference in Puebla
on The Americas in Transition: Challenges of a New Millennium, I spoke mainly
about the first dimension: the very Canadian way in which the primacy of
individual rights is established while taking account of collective identities.
Today, I will talk about the second dimension. I will show how our flexible
federalism enables provinces which are equal in status to express their own
personalities.
Federalism and diversity
Most federations have significant differences in
the character of their constituent states: size, wealth, language, ethnic or
religious make-up. This is true of Mexico and of Canada as well. At the same
time, the best established federations tend to give their constituent units
roughly the same constitutional powers. This is true of the United States,
Australia, Germany, Switzerland. Despite huge differences, for example, between
Alaska and California, or between Quebec and Prince Edward Island, the
constitutional powers of these state or provincial governments are essentially
the same.
Of course, it is not inconceivable that a
federation could have some asymmetries in the basic powers assigned to different
states or provinces. But the functional significance of such asymmetries would
depend on the extent of the differences, the political weight of the state or
states with the extra powers and the possibility of other states having the
extra powers if they so chose.
Spain, for example, has experimented with
asymmetries, and there appears to be a tendency for units that have had fewer
powers to seek the greater powers of the bigger states.
Inevitably, an extremely asymmetric regime gives
rise to questions about the role that elected representatives from different
states play at the centre. If the federal government is responsible for
education in some states but not others, must the federal Minister of Education
be from a state where it has this responsibility? Should representatives from
all states vote on federal educational matters? Can very differentiated roles
for representatives at the centre be sustained over time? These issues go to the
heart of the representative nature of the central federal institutions.
Thus while some asymmetries may fit particular
circumstances, there is room for deep scepticism about a federal architecture
which is too asymmetric.
This raises the question: how can very different
constituent units be content with the same constitutional status? How can
federalism be flexible enough to respect both the principle of equality and that
of diversity?
Federations use three methods to achieve this
end. The first is financial asymmetry. This consists in establishing
intergovernmental transfer mechanisms that are specifically designed to assist
the less wealthy components of the federation. The objective is to ensure that,
despite the inequality of their autonomous revenues, the components are more
equal in actual fact.
The second method is constitutional asymmetry. In
this case, the Constitution recognizes certain specific arrangements that meet
the needs of some of the federation's components without challenging the
equality among them.
The third method may be called optional
asymmetry, which stems from the different relations that develop between the
federal government and the other governments within the federation. Some may
choose to exercise all of their constitutional responsibilities, while others
prefer to assign some of them to the federal government.
Compared with other well established federations,
Canada practises these three forms of asymmetry to a considerable extent (Ronald
Watts, Comparing Federal Systems in the 1990s, Queen's University, 1998, p.
100). Our country does so while respecting the equality of status of the
provinces.
1. Financial asymmetry
The Canadian federation has an intergovernmental
financial redistribution mechanism that is undoubtedly unequalled in scope in
any other federation. Section 36 of the Constitution Act, 1982 commits the
federal government to help equalize the field so that all provinces have
"sufficient revenues to provide reasonably comparable levels of public
services at reasonably comparable levels of taxation."
This principle, which has been called a
"pillar of modern Canadian federalism" (D. Milne, "Equality or
Asymmetry: Why Choose?", in Options for a New Canada, University of Toronto
Press, 1991, p. 295), is an overt recognition of the natural differences (such
as size, population, wealth, etc.) that exist among the constituent units of our
federation. It is strongly and consistently supported by Canadians from have and
have-not provinces alike.
2. Constitutional asymmetry
All of our ten provinces have broadly the same
constitutional powers. It is true that, in the period from 1905 to 1930, the
newly created provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan did not have the authority
over natural resources that resided with the other provinces. This was a
significant source of grievance on their part which was only resolved through
giving them the same powers as the other provinces. As for our northern
territories, vast, with a limited population and very dependant on federal aid,
they do not have the constitutional status of provinces.
There are significant "asymmetries" of
other types in terms of special provisions for individual provinces within the
Canadian constitution. The historic constitutional protection for denominational
(that is to say, religious-based) schools, for example, has varied a good deal
between provinces, depending on their character and earlier history. And at the
provincial level, only the government and legislature of New Brunswick is
officially bilingual, while in Quebec and Manitoba, the minority languages of
English and French respectively, have some important constitutional protection.
Only Quebec uses civil law while the rest of Canada uses common law, and three
of the nine seats on the Supreme Court are therefore kept for civil law lawyers
from Quebec. In the same vein, the Constitution Act, 1867 addressed the
possibility of unifying private law in the common law provinces, which
implicitly excluded Quebec and protected its civil law tradition. Under the
Constitution Act, 1982 the Government of Quebec has the right to limit access to
English schools for as long as it deems this to be desirable in order to better
protect the French language in our North American context.
3. Optional asymmetry
Optional asymmetry takes many forms in Canada.
These asymmetries have arisen over time, because the provinces have chosen to
use their powers in different ways. Some provinces, Quebec first and foremost,
have used many more of the possibilities provided for in the Canadian
Constitution. A number of federal government policies encourage this
flexibility.
For example, most of our provinces have
integrated their personal and corporate income tax regimes with the federal
regime, but Quebec has kept both distinct and Ontario has a separate corporate
tax regime. Similarly, the tax collection arrangements for provincial taxes vary
across the country, with the federal government collecting provincial income,
corporate or sales taxes in some provinces but not others.
Our immigration regime is managed differently in
Quebec than in the other provinces because the government of Quebec has
concluded a bilateral agreement with the federal government in this area of
joint jurisdiction. Pensions, also a joint jurisdiction, are managed by the
federal government outside Quebec while in Quebec the province manages a regime
that is closely coordinated with the federal one. Both Ontario and Quebec have
their own police forces, whereas the other provinces contract the Royal Canadian
Mounted Police to do provincial policing.
Some human resources programs paid for by the
federal government have had their management transferred in different degrees to
the provinces, depending on the arrangement they have preferred with the federal
government. For example, recent job training agreements gave the provinces the
choice between extensive autonomy or co-management of programs with the federal
government. The Government of Newfoundland opted for co-management, while the
Government of Quebec chose autonomy.
Finally, Quebec and New Brunswick have the status
of participating governments within the Organisation internationale de la
Francophonie, which is not the case for the other Canadian provinces.
The flexibility of Canadian federalism thus
allows for extensive optional asymmetry in comparison with what is generally
found in other federations. The key point of these asymmetries is that they do
not reflect differences in underlying constitutional powers, but demonstrate the
flexibility of the federation in terms of the practical use of these powers.
Conclusion
This is the Canadian way of seeking unity in
diversity. The result is that the provinces' equal status is not to be confused
with uniformity. It is very much in keeping with the pluralist quest for public
service quality. This is the ideal of our federation. I am not saying that it
has managed to achieve that ideal perfectly. I am saying that pursuit of that
ideal is the very essence of our federation.
Canadian federalism is not set in stone. No
federalism should be. It is continually evolving, along with the different needs
of our populations. A number of the intergovernmental arrangements I have
described may vary in the future, and others may be added, but the Canadian
federation will always have the same objective: to make it possible to pursue
common objectives through diversity of experience. Is this not the objective you
are pursuing in Mexico through your New Federalism?
This objective is pursued in Canada through
determination and considerable discussion. The debate is often heated. Our Prime
Minister, the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien, likes to say that Canadians have
two convictions. The first is that Canada is the best country in the world. The
second is that their province does not get its fair share within the federation.
These debates, these discussions, this pluralist
quest, can all seem complicated and difficult sometimes. But it is precisely
from this constant synergy that Canadians draw the vitality that gives them
their enviable quality of life. They could not do so in disunity, nor if Canada
were a unitary country rather than a decentralized federation. More and more
Canadians, particularly Quebecers, are coming to realize this.
Of course, there is no single model
of federalism. Our federalism is not the same as Mexican federalism or American
federalism, for example, because our contexts and the challenges we face are
different. Nevertheless, federalism is likely one of the best responses to
ensure that diversity is the very opposite of a problem, a threat or a source of
division, and is instead a strength which helps a country to prosper in unity.
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