Geography
Devolution in Canada
Devolution in Canada refers to the transfer of powers and responsibilities from the federal government to provincial and territorial governments. This process allows regions to have more control over areas such as natural resources, education, and healthcare. Devolution has led to greater autonomy and decision-making power for provinces and territories within the Canadian federation.
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4 Key excerpts on "Devolution in Canada"
eBook - PDFDiverging Mobilities
Devolution, Transport and Policy Innovation
- Danny MacKinnon, Jon Shaw, Iain Docherty, Danny MacKinnon, Jon Shaw, Iain Docherty, Steven Tiesdell(Authors)
- 2008(Publication Date)
- Elsevier Science Ltd(Publisher)
Indeed, the regions accounted for only nine per cent of local state 0 km 750 0 miles 500 Alberta Manitoba Ontario Quebec Newfoundland Nova Scotia New Brunswick Prince Edward Island Saskat-chewan Yukon Territory Northwest Territories Nunavut British Columbia C A N A D A A r c t i c C i r c l e Figure 2.6: Canadian provinces. Devolution, State Restructuring and Regional Government 29 expenditure, being far outweighed by the two lower tiers of sub-national government: the departments and communes that are responsible for social policy and urban development, respectively ( Scargill, 1997 ). In Spain, by contrast, the autonomous communities have much wider powers, accounting for 29.5 per cent of all government expenditure following the transfer of health and education to all regions ( Giordano & Roller, 2004 ). Outside of the Basque Country and Navarre, which in recognition of their historic legal codes ( fueros ) are empowered to collect taxes and then pass on a share to central government, the majority of finance is provided by central government grants (72.8 per cent in 1998) ( Castells, 2001 ). In 1996, the ‘ordinary’ regions gained more extended financial powers, being allowed to keep 30 per cent of locally raised income tax (initially it was 15 per cent) and to vary the rate by up to 3 per cent ( Keating, 1998 ). As a result of the wide powers of the autonomous communities and such fiscal decentralisation, it has become more difficult for central government to control public spending. At the same time, increased tensions between richer and poorer regions have emerged over what they contribute to and receive from the national exchequer ( Giordano & Roller, 2004 ). A key issue associated with devolution concerns the relationship between devolved institutions and other levels of government, both national and local.
eBook - PDF- Rémy Tremblay, Hugues Chicoine(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
However, even a quick glance at Figure 2, which defines the evolving boundaries of Canada as a nation-state will indicate that building Canadian territory has been a project which has taken almost two centuries. This figure suggests that there were essentially two important projects which contributed to the evolution of regions within the Canadian territory. One was the evolution of political control as the federal government as extended the impress of its power through the negotiation of new lands or through the definition of border. The other was through the delegation of territorial status and regional gov- ernance to Canadian territories to the north and west. The construction of these territorial boundaries, both external and internal, was not completed until the late 20 th century, and indeed is still underway. Indeed, the contemporary political map of Canada is only a decade old, as Nunavut came into its own. But even more subtle that the internal division of territory within Canada, have been changes to the rights and responsibilities of territorial governance and the division of The Geographies of Canada 132 territories into small and more empowered provincial governments. These changes have, in essence, captured the regional differentiation process and increasingly focused it upon sub-nation, provincial scales.
eBook - PDFFederalism and Political Community
Essays in Honour of Donald Smiley
- David Shugarman, Reginald Whitaker(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- University of Toronto Press(Publisher)
Politics is judged to be about place instead of people prosperity and therewith, conflict revolves around the allocation of power and resources across geographic units rather than, for example, among social classes. It emphasizes relationships in geographic space in which some territorial units gain or lose in relation to other territorial units. The spatial dimension of Canadian politics 36 -JANINE BRODIE thus evokes two primary research questions: first, why does development occur unevenly in geographic space; and second, how does the fact of uneven spatial development translate into spatially-based political conflict? Canadian political scientists have provided many different ( and often inadequate) answers to these two primary research questions-answers which reflect their particular approach to regional definition. There are primarily two analytic procedures for defining regional boundaries-the formal and relational mcthods. 14 Each method, in turn, promotes specific assumptions about the nature of regional integration or how regions relate to one another and to the nation-state. Regional Definition and Integration We have already seen that there are numerous ways to determine a formal region. They are designated by homogeneity or similarity in features which distinguish them from contiguous areas. 15 Typi-cally in the past, students of Canadian history and politics have relied uncritically on environmental criteria for designating regions. Canadian regions have been defined by a similarity in physical features and climate and separated from other regions hy prominent topographical features. The familiar designation of Canadian territory into the Atlantic, Central 1 Prairie, Pacific, and Arctic regions is a product of this approach.
eBook - PDF- Peter Leslie(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- University of Toronto Press(Publisher)
6 (De)centralization: meaning, measures, significance Over more than a century we have seen a deep-rooted process that tends increasingly to centralization of the true levers of political power. Claude Morin (1973) 1 Over the last two decades, contrary to the myth of ever increasing centralization, we have seen a weakening of the fiscal and economic muscle of the federal government and a corresponding increase in the fiscal and economic muscle of the provinces or at least of the richer provinces. Inevitably there has been a corresponding shift in political power. I do not say tha t this phenomenon has been unhealthy but the risks are great when it goes too far. Jean Chreti en (198 1) 2 Much of the recent history of Canadian federalism has been marked by intense intergovernmen tal rivalry. Each of the two senior orders of government has claimed that the other has sought to expand its powers, overstepping the role assigned to it in the consti tution. These al legations have been ammunition in a propaganda war; each order of government, by portraying its rival as a usurper, has sought to bolster the legitimacy of its own cause. Though they have served an ulterior purpose, such complaints and allegations are not mere cant. The politicians who have made them appear to have been genuinely frustrated by their incapacity to implement policies that they considered necessary and sometimes urgent. Provincial leaders have complained about centraliza tion because they were incapable of meeting provincial needs as they pe rceived them. Federal leaders have complained about decentralization because they could not adequately perform what they regarded as the duties of a national government. In both cases the pol_iticians were also worried about loss of political support. Is it not possible, they have said, to restore the balance of federal and provincial power?
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