Is there a federal/provincial relationship?

Canada is governed by a complex, sometimes duplicative, and power-sharing relationship between three levels of government. When we produced the illustrative list of federal government legislation, policies, programs and incentives over a ten-year period, it highlighted two things. First, the considerable time lags between introduction and implementation, and second, the potential for conflict between the federal and provincial governments for implementation. Most environmental issues, which most of the public is not aware, is within provincial jurisdiction, not federal.

 A recent example of this mutual co-dependency is the recent announcement by the Federal government launching a multibillion-dollar fund to pay for infrastructure needed to build housing and which will bypass any provinces that object to the requirements to deal directly with municipalities. Access to the funds include a number of conditions, eliminating single-family zoning and allowing fourplexes by default, freezing development charges, and adopting changes to the national building code. Some provinces, including Quebec and Ontario, quickly rejected the program as encroaching on their jurisdiction.

 This is an old, old argument that has stymied government collaboration, slowed the implementation of climate change adaptation and mitigation, dampened down inter-provincial cooperation, and even slows down the creation of natural parks, to name only a few. Given that the resolution of modern challenges demands unprecedented collaboration and are beyond any one sector, any one discipline or any one level of government to solve in isolation (Dale, 2001), this age old jockeying for power and control between the provincial and federal governments is so very counterproductive, ecologically destructive and economically perverse (MacNeill, per.comm).