Forging the Canadian Social Union: SUFA and Beyond

Jeffrey J. Cormier is an assistant professor of sociology at the
University of Western Ontario in London. He is the author of The
Canadianization Movement: Emergence, Survival and Success.

In 1999, the Canadian provinces, with the exception of Quebec, signed
the Social Union Framework Agreement (SUFA) with the federal government.
In the spring of 2000, the Institute for Research on Public Policy
(IRPP) launched an independent evaluation of the SUFA. Seven leading
scholars came together to assess the impact that the SUFA has had on
intergovernmental relations in Canada. This book is the English-language
version of this collective evaluation of the social union agreement.

The collective and individual judgment of the SUFA is overwhelming and
near unanimous: it is and will most likely be a colossal failure. Almost
all contributors are in agreement that the reality of a social union
between the provinces and the federal government—an informal
non-constitutional agreement about who has what power, who gets what
money and how much—falls far short of the rhetoric of the official
document. The underlying assumption that animates each paper is that
federal-provincial relations in Canada are dysfunctional at a structural
level and that no new agreement will change much.

Roger Gibbins’s analysis forces him to admit that while the SUFA was
not a success, at least it did no harm. Alain Noлl’s analysis places
the SUFA in a larger historical context. Michael Prince’s chapter does
the same, concluding that it is best to see the SUFA as merely one of
many such attempts to build a Canadian social union. Christian Dufour
maintains that Quebec’s refusal to participate is really an indication
of the impasse between Quebec and Canada more generally. Yves
Vaillancourt compares Quebec models for social policy with Canadian
models. Susan Phillips raises the notion of citizenship and civil
society, maintaining that a social union is not just about
intergovernmental relationships but also about citizens’ relationship
to their government. Bruno Théret has perhaps the most interesting
contribution: he compares the European Union and Canadian efforts at a
social, political, and economic union.

It is unclear where this book and its analyses fit. All contributors
admit that the SUFA is an ineffectual document about which, polls
indicate, most Canadians know or care little.