State, Society, and the Development of Canadian Federalism

Nobuaki Suyama is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the
University of Alberta.

A glance at the bibliography indicates how comprehensive this book is.
The work, done jointly by a well-known scholar and a young rising star,
is commendable for its incredibly wide coverage of empirical facts and
academic interpretations. It is useful both for students learning about
Canadian federalism and for specialists reconsidering their views.

As neutrally as possible, the authors describe and explain the Canadian
federal system up to the Meech Lake Accord. First, while a state-centred
model and a society-centred one exist in analyzing Canadian federalism,
the authors avoid a single-factor approach in favor of one emphasizing
the interactions between state and society. Second, the book takes
neither a definitively centralist nor an adamant provincialist
standpoint. Third, a historical approach, which sees big swings of power
between the federal and provincial governments, directs the
authors—and readers—away from any fixed conceptualization of
Canadian federalism. Fourth, the writers eschew an ideologically preset
stance (in the sense of the right-left spectrum when discussing economic
and welfare issues). And fifth, these two anglophone scholars are
neither francophobes nor francophiles in their approach to the Quebec
question. The volume ends with a normative view on federalism by
positively identifying the federal system’s democratic values and
economic efficiency.

Although this work, realized by the Macdonald Commission, is a valuable
addition to federalism literature, it regrettably provides no index;
this oversight prevents its effective use as a resource book.
Nonetheless, tracing the evolution of Canadian federalism, to learn how
Canada extricated itself from past crises, is a hope-restoring
experience now that it is facing another serious one.