Stretching the Federation: The Art of the State in Canada

J.L. Granatstein, distinguished research professor emeritus of history
at York University. He is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and
co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influential Canadians of the
20th Century, Prime Ministers: Ranking

From the 1930s to the 1950s, Queen’s University was a hotbed of
centralized federalism, its professors and their students almost
literally shaping and controlling the public service mandarinate. Men
like O.D. Skelton, W.A. Mackintosh, Donald Gordon, and John Deutsch
believed that Ottawa, and only Ottawa, had the will and the resources to
make Canada into a strong nation.

Now, Queen’s and Canada are very different. The Institute of
Intergovernmental Relations and Tom Courchene, the director of the John
Deutsch Institute at the university, are among the leading decentralist
advocates in the country. Courchene alone has produced a flood of
brilliant books and articles that explore the soft underbelly of the
federal state and, among other things, posit a virtually independent
Ontario going its own way. The Harris government seems to be operating
out of Courchene’s pages most of the time.

This book, which features a long essay by Courchene, is the product of
a 1997 conference that looked at the state of the federation and, as the
title suggests, proposed ways to stretch it in different directions. Is
decentralization a right-wing concept? one paper asks. Yes and no is the
answer. Should Ontario have its own income tax system independent of
Ottawa? Courchene asks. There are advantages, but there are also costs.
In other words, this a balanced book with commentators poking holes in
the papers and offering alternate visions. What this suggests is that
Canadian federalism is in evolution, the pendulum for now continuing to
swing toward greater provincial powers. Whether this is a good thing for
Canadians remains unproven, however.