Canada's Shotgun Federalism
How should a diverse federation be governed? Probably not by continuous threats.
Canada is a tough country to govern. In a sprawling, decentralized federation, relationships between the national and provincial governments are tricky to navigate during the best of times and between the best of minds. Each province has its own challenges, desires, imperatives, and peculiarities. Provincial cultures are not the same. A varied distribution of natural resources and industries further complicates matters since the interests of the provinces depend on who’s got what and to whom they’re selling it. Language differences — and not just between French and English — matter, too. Indigenous Peoples and nations, who are often forgotten or ignored, have their own needs and rights within both federal and provincial contexts.
We rarely live in the best of times, and we’re rarely led by the best of minds. So, right off the bat, we’re in trouble. But we try. Over the years, Canada has counted various approaches to managing the federation that reflect the preferences of prime ministers and premiers, and the scholars who try to assess how leaders keep this country stitched together.
We’ve had cooperative federalism and competitive federalism. We’ve had asymmetrical federalism, fiscal federalism, and executive federalism. These varieties blend together, mixing on the fly. On any given day, who knows what’s going on, but by god is it ever going on. We feel our way forward as a country, waiting for the inevitable crisis that will threaten to tear us apart, and we try to get things done when we’ve got the chance. The outcome is rarely perfect, but some days are better than others.
These days are not of the better variety. Today, the country is practicing shotgun federalism. You won’t find that in a textbook or scholarly paper, I don’t think. I just made it up the other day from the road, a long trip to Australia and New Zealand for book events, as I watched the country self-abuse from a distance. With the Carney ministry offering Alberta concessions on the industrial carbon price and a pipeline in the hopes of, let’s say, ah, nation-building and keeping the family together, the feds got in return exactly what you’d think: nothing.
The overestimated-but-still-dangerous forces of Alberta separatism weren’t placated by the bargain, and Premier Danielle Smith continues to try to walk a line so fine that it makes the threads of a spider web look like the trunk of a redwood. Her strategy of a “sovereign Alberta in a united Canada,” whatever that means, smacks of wanting-to-have-it-all-itis. I get wanting it all. I’ve been there. But it doesn’t work.
In British Columbia, a province that doesn’t care to have a pipeline cutting through its territory and running to tidewater, David Eby’s government has started to wonder what it would have to do to get the attention of the feds and a fair bargain for itself. If Alberta was going to act up to get what it wants, why shouldn’t B.C.? Maybe Cascadia calls.
Down the road to the east, the Parti Québécois has a serious shot at winning the upcoming election in la belle province. The party is promising a vote on separation if it wins. Its leader, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, is defending Smith for obvious reasons.
Quebec separatism isn’t new. Provincial leaders there have long known that threats to abandon the federation make for useful politics, because even if a vote on separation fails, you win: the national government, aware of the threat, will yield special concessions to prevent future votes from taking place, or succeeding.
Soon, other provinces are going to remember that they, too, exist. Expect demands to follow. What then?
Shotgun federalism is the art of walking around with a loaded gun in your mouth and hoping it doesn’t go off by accident. Each province wants a good deal within the federation, which is to say each province wants what it wants and doesn’t much care what the others get, unless the others get something good that they don’t. When a province decides it’s not getting a fair deal, it might elect to act up in the hopes that the tantrum will yield results.
The thing about walking around with a shotgun in your mouth is that it might go off. Or else some crazy bastard might decide to pull the trigger on principle. It’s no way to run a country. If the model of federalism we land on is everyone threatening to dismantle the institutions that hold us together unless they get what they want, we’re going to have a bad time of things. You can’t keep this place together in the long term that way. As Chekhov teaches us, eventually the gun must go off.
The solution to shotgun federalism is to put the gun down and talk. Call me an optimist, I guess. But I think it can be done. When I’m asked to compliment the late Conservative government of Stephen Harper, which I can indeed do, I often reference the former prime minister’s approach to federal-provincial relations. Harper understood something many of his predecessors didn’t, which is that when you bring the provinces together at scale and in grand ways, you get rolled.
Years of subtle, often bilateral, federal-provincial efforts kept the peace, more or less — at least comparatively. This approach limits what you can do, and perhaps means you can’t always fully rise to meet the moment when the country is called upon to do grand national things, but look what you get when you try to show off. Is that better?
I like the idea of a patient, hybrid, deliberative form of federalism that brings provinces and the feds together only when utterly necessary and then as quietly as possible. You’ve got to pick your timing and your battles. No sudden moves. Everybody stay cool.
If you’ve got a premier who’s going to make your life miserable, you may have to wait things out. If the matter at hand looks likely to provoke inter-provincial or federal-provincial war, you might have to take a beat unless you really, really have no other choice. But the moment you think you can ride the bull is the moment you get gored.
Alternatively, we might hope for a better batch of premiers and more responsible, even-keeled electorates who’d prefer not to be pandered to or mobilized as pawns in a demented game of political chess. Call that a long-term plan. Call it aspirational. In the meantime, I’d settle for everyone calming down for a moment, putting down their weapons, and seeing whether we can’t tackle some small things together as we build momentum towards accomplishing the bigger ones.
The notion of making a deal with someone like Danielle Smith within the context of federalism is just laughable. Anyone thinking a pipeline will reconcile Smith with the rest of the country is insane. Alberta politics is largely built on grievance culture, and Smith really has no other play except explaining every problem is the result of Trudeau, Carney, or some other random set of eastern bastards. The level of brain rot required to articulate the idea of sovereign Alberta within Canada is difficult to comprehend, much less trying to make it work.
A beautifully written and I suspect on-point article. One of the issues flagged is the electorate also being responsible in avoiding the difficult problems; it could just be me but this seems to be more of a stretch than ever, including here in the UK.