Federalism and Fragmentation: A Comparative View of Political Accommodation in Canada

David E. Smith is a political science professor at the University of
Saskatchewan and author of Jimmy Gardiner: Relentless Liberal.

The author, Skelton-Clark Fellow in the Department of Political Science at Queen’s University during 1983-84, is a teacher of political science at the University of Konstanz in West Germany. It is necessary to note his background, for Hueglin’s monograph is an unusual document in the realm of Canadian federal literature. With its historical and theoretical sweep, it is both comparative and revisionist in its treatment of Canadian federalism. None of these characteristics marks recent writing by Canadians on the subject.

Hueglin argues that the fragmentation of the Canadian federal system, evident in the growth of provincial claims and jurisdiction and which Canadian academics generally deplore, is the system’s greatest strength. The reason is that the nation-state, characterized by hierarchy and concentrated power, everywhere is under attack and in retreat. In particular, in the last decade, as economic scarcity has visited the Western nations, a new politics of scarcity has emerged and with it social disruption. Canada’s traditional cleavages — regional, social, and political — moderated through such mechanisms as federal-provincial bargaining, provide models of accommodation. The Canadian experience, with a desire for strong national unity on the one hand and with assertive and disparate provincial claims on the other, makes this country of unique interest.

This is both a different and a reassuring analysis, for it reminds Canadians what they are not used to hearing, which is that Canada enjoys political strength and that it rests in what native academics often see as a weakness — the vitality of regionalism.

If not a palatable argument for English-Canadian nationalists, Hueglin’s thesis requires serious thought, especially at a time when a new federal government is seeking provincial consensus. Whether the monograph receives the attention it deserves is doubtful: not only is the argument unfamiliar, but the language used to make it is equally so, being stilted in sense and tortured in expression.