Ch 17 - The Federal System Flashcards
What is federalism?
- Division of powers between the central and regional (provincial) governments
What does federalism tell us about Canada’s political system?
- Relationship between central and regional governments is equal in status
Are the municipal governments subordinate to the provincial governments?
- YES
Are the Territorial governments subordinate to the national government?
- YES
Who is the provincial head of state?
- Lt. Governor
Who appoints the Lt. Governor?
- The Prime Minister
Who is the head of government at the provincial level?
- Premier
Who makes up the provincial political system’s executive branch?
- Drawn from legislative assembly
Who appoints the ministers?
- Premier
How is the provincial legislative assembly formed?
- Elections
How are provincial chambers organized?
- Unicameral (one chamber)
What view did Sir John A Macdonald have for federalism?
- Very Centralized
How is Canada’s federal system organized today?
Decentralized
How is Canada’s federal system decentralized?
- Judicial Review
- Shifting Jurisdictional Importance
- Taxing Power
- Public Favour
- National Standards
What are the 5 components of the confederation settlement?
- Division of powers between the central and provincial government
- Division of financial resources
- Federal control imposed upon the provinces
- Provincial representation in the central institutions
- Certain cultural guarantees
What is Quasi-federalism?
- Provinces subordinate to Ottawa
What is Classical Federalism?
- Fed/prov equal in status and independent
What is Emergency Federalism?
- Federal gov’t virtually unlimited powers under the emergency doctrine of the War Measures Act
What is Cooperative Federalism?
- Equal in status but intertwined financially
What is conflictual federalism?
- More provincial independence with shift to block grants & growing Quebec nationalism
What is the fiscal gap?
- Provincial taxes not enough for provincial government responsibilities, top-sided-ness of taxes.
What are the four main transfer programs in Canada?
- Canada Health Transfer (CHT)
- Canada Social Transfer (CST)
- Equalization Formula Financing
- Territorial Formula Financing (TFF)
Explain the Cost-shared programme in Canada
Provincially administered
- Ottawa’s financial contribution is geared to how much a province needs
What is block funding?
- Feds are not obliged to match provincial spending
What is the results of Block Funding?
- Increase in the financial burden upon the provinces to pay the costs for health care & post-secondary education
What are the two categories that funding can fall under?
- Conditional grants
- Unconditional grants
What is a conditional grant?
- Some of the money Ottawa transfers to the provinces carries conditions as to how it can be spent
What are unconditional grants?
- Financial transfers with no strings attached
What are the 5 important principles of the Canada Health Transfer and Canada Social Transfer?
- Portability of coverage between provinces
- Comprehensiveness of provincial plans
- Universality
- Public Funding
- Public Administration
What is an example of a conditional grant?
- Canada Health Act
What is an example of an unconditional grant?
- Equalization Grant
What is the equalization grant?
- payments made from the federal governmetn to the provinces whose per capita tax revenues falls below average of two most affluent provinces.
How much of all federal transfers do equalization payments account for?
- 1/4
Are there conditions on equalization payments?
NO
What do provinces complain about federal payments?
- Inadequate
- Fed gov’t interfere in prove jurisdiction through spending
Why did government pull some funding from provinces?
- Provinces blaming feds for undermining National Standards in social programmes
What areas of policy do federal and provincial work together in?
- Health Care
- Equalization Payments / Transfers
- Environment
- Indigenous Peoples
- Cities
- Justice
- Quebec
What kind of federalism was Canada under PM Martin?
- Collaborative Federalism
What type of Federalism was Canada under Harper?
- Open Federalism (very decentralized)
What kind of federalism is Canada under Trudeau?
- Centralized
