Canadian Abortion Policy: National Policy and the Impact of Federalism and Political Implementation on Access to Services

The Canada Health Act requires provinces and territories toprovide medically necessary services and to provide equal accessto such services. Since 1995, the governing Liberal Party hasissued statements indicating that it views abortion servicesas medically necessary services. Yet the operation of healthdelivery systems in Canada is primarily reserved for the provincesand territories. Provincial and territorial access to abortionservices is significantly affected by bottom-up political implementation,where national policy is often undermined and "trumped" by thepolitics and pressures operative within provincial and territorialpolitical systems and by other intense interest group pressures.     

The Effect of the Charter of Rights on Canadian Federalism

Canadian experience under the 1982 Charter of Rights contradictsthe orthodox understanding of judicial review as a decentralizinginstitution that performs a checking or blocking function. Charterpolitics in Canada suggest that in a federal system, judicialreview can also enhance values and policies favored by the nationalgovernment at the expense of the constituent units. Rather thanweakening the policy capabilities of the federal government,the Canadian Charter has enhanced its influence. The Charterhas undermined the policy autonomy of the provinces by givinga policy veto to the Supreme Court, an institution that is morereceptive to the policy preferences of national elites, especiallyin the area of language policy. This has aggravated French-Englishrelations, because of the high incidence of judicial nullificationsof Quebec's restrictive language policies. Elite attempts tocompensate Quebec by way of new constitutional amendments (e.g.,the Meech Lake Accord) have been thwarted by the emergence ofan influential coalition of postmaterialist social interests,which use Charter litigation to promote their nonterritorialpolicy objectives. These "Charter Canadians"have opposed constitutionalamendments that would "weaken" the Charter or the Court. Thiscoalition has broken Canadian governments' historical monopolyon the constitutional amending process. By stimulating the democratizationof constitutional politics, the Charter has weakened the institutionsof consociational democracy and elite accommodation. This hasdiminished the influence of all the provinces, but especiallyQuebec, thereby contributing to the recent rise in secessionisttendencies within Quebec.     

The Macdonald Commission Report and Canadian Federalism

The Macdonald Commission report is the latest in a series ofreports on Canadian federalism. Its proposal for free tradewith the United States has attracted the most public attentionand has already raised the issue of the appropriate role ofthe provinces in the negotiations. This proposal, together withproposed domestic economic and social policies directed at greaterreliance on market forces, would have a significant impact onthe relative roles of the federal and provincial governments.The institutional reforms advocated are intended to make thecentral institutions more representative and responsive, toensure federal leadership within the economic union, to clarifythe distribution of responsibilities between governments, andto facilitate intergovernmental relations. The proposals arebased on an underlying conception that while interdependencebetween governments in a federation is unavoidable, federalismis essentially competitive rather than cooperative in character.     

The Fusion of Powers and the Crisis of Canadian Federalism

The crisis in Canadian federalism has not emerged suddenly,but has been building for many years. It is our contention thatCanada's political and constitutional problems can only be alleviatedby reform of the parliamentary system. The fusion of executiveand legislative powers inherent in the parliamentary systemrequires strict party discipline to sustain a government, arequirement intensifying the difficulties posed by Canada'sparticular combination of enormous geographic size and ethnicand regional differentiation. The fusion of powers is not onlya major obstacle to the formation of a national consensus andconciliatory parties. It contributes also to the absence oftrust and the lack of a common national desire to form adequatebargaining mechanisms to resolve differences. The particularCanadian intergovernmental relationships and several of theconditions responsible for them are shown to be idiosyncratic,only partly related to the federal structure, and of great importanceto an understanding of the country's current situation.     

Public Enterprises and Canadian Foreign Economic Policy

To what extent can public enterprises serve as instruments ofpolicy enabling the federal government to assert a measure ofcontrol over Canada's foreign economic relations? This articlepresents an overview of public enterprises in Canada and highlightsthe special features of the Canadian political economy whichdifferentiate it from other advanced industrial economies. Theactivities of the Canada Development Corporation and CanadianNational Railways are analyzed in terms of whether they reinforceor undermine the federal government's authority in foreign economicpolicymaking. It appears that the relative autonomy of publicenterprises from government controls, most pronounced in thecase of commercial enterprises operating in competitive markets,fragments decisionmaking. Given that governmental power in Canadais already fragmented due to competitive federalism, and giventhe expanded activities of provincial public enterprises inrecent years, a lack of direction over the "subgovernment" offederal public enterprises compounds the difficulties for Ottawato conduct a coherent, foreign economic policy.     

Fission and Federalism: The Disaggregation of Canadian Party Activists

This article focuses on the Progressive Conservative (PC) partyof Canada and contrasts the orientations of four different setsof PC party workers: those who are active in the provincialarena in Nova Scotia and in Alberta, as well as those who areactive in the national arena from the same two provinces. Thedata reveal that federalism has had a disaggregative effecton Canadian political party ideology. Not only is the cleavagebetween activists in different orders of government consistentlylarge; it also generally exceeds that which exists between activistsin different provinces.     

Energy, Canadian Federalism, and the West

Two separate questions are investigated. First, are recent policiesof the western provinces in any sense a threat to Canadian federalismor an important cause of the current crisis? Secondly, and alternatively,is Canadian federalism a threat to the West in the sense thatthe institutions of the country cannot, in their present form,respond to the needs and aspirations of the region? These issuesare explored in the context of political and economic developmentsassociated with the energy crisis of the last decade. The conclusionis that Canadian federalism demonstrated a surprising resiliencyin the face of a very severe challenge.     

Canadian Federalism, The Charter of Rights, and the 1984 Election

The federal election of 1984 may prove to be a critical eventin the evolution of Canadian federalism. The election createda political climate favorable to a restructuring of the Canadianpolitical agenda away from the "territorial politics" that hasdominated it for several decades, toward a politics of national,non territorial issues. Such a transformation of the politicalagenda had been sought by the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau,which saw the new Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms as amechanism for promoting a more national politics. The climateof intergovernmental confrontation that characterized the Trudeauera, however, may very well have undermined the Charter's nationalunity potential. Ironically, that potential is more likely tobe realized under the Mulroney Conservatives than it would havebeen under a continuation of the Trudeau regime.     

Canadian Federalism: The Entanglement of Meech Lake and the Free Trade Agreement

In retrospect, 1988 may turn out to be a pivotal year in theevolution of Canadian federalism. The November general electionwas dominated by an intense national debate over the proposedFree Trade Agreement with the United States. Although the FreeTrade Agreement was seen to have important ramifications forCanadian federalism, coherent discussion of those ramificationsbecame blurred in the face of a much broader and emotionallypartisan debate. Concerns about the nature of Canadian federalismwere instead absorbed by, and in part displaced by, an emergingnational debate on the Meech Lake Constitutional Accord. TheAccord had been reached by the eleven first ministers in 1987,but by the end of 1988 it had yet to receive legislative ratificationin Manitoba and New Brunswick. In the aftermath of the 1988election, debates over free trade and the Accord have becomeprogressively entangled. While this entanglement did not alterthe outcome of the free trade debate, it has had important consequencesfor the Meech Lake Accord, and thus for the future of Canadianfederalism.     

The Armenian-American Lobby and Its Impact on U.S. Foreign Policy

Most of the few studies and press articles dealing with the U.S. Armenian lobby have tended to insist on this lobby’s successes, regarded as impressive and disproportionate. This has generated a few problems in its global understanding, especially with regards to its impact on U.S. foreign policy, and has contributed to shape a generalized perception of a “small” lobby, capable of considerable influence on U.S. foreign policy. The main goal of this article is to question this common perception in order to propose a more accurate evaluation of this lobby. Mostly thanks to its influence in Congress, it has succeeded in getting positive results, particularly concerning U.S. financial assistance to Armenia. However, it has also experienced some failures, particularly on issues related to Turkey or American energy policy.     

The New Federalism Game: Primacy Implementation of Environmental Policy

Federal environmental laws have substantially preempted statepowers over pollution control. Many of these laws contain aunique implementation scheme called "primacy," which offersa state the opportunity to become the primary enforcement agentfor federal policies. Primacy relieves the federal governmentfrom enforcing laws within state boundaries even while it retainsultimate control over the policies involved and sets minimumstandards. By and large, states have chosen to accept primacy.Characteristics of the units involved in the implementationprocess explain much of this success. Deviations from the expectedpatterns reveal how states can manipulate primacy to their ownadvantage. It is possible, however, that game playing by thestates under primacy could undermine the ultimate goals of nationalenvironmental policies.     

Federalism and Social Policy: The Case of Domestic Violence

This paper challenges long standing critiques of federalism that suggest it stymies the development of progressive social policies. Through a case study of national domestic violence policies in Australia, this paper argues that not only can the curses of federalism – especially conservatism, duplication and overlap – be surmounted, but even more positively, under the right condition, federalism can enhance opportunities for the development of progressive social policy. While the Howard government has adopted a conservative approach to domestic violence, federal structures have made it possible to maintain an alternative discourse at the state level. Moreover, national policy coordination machinery has opened the path for policy learning and innovation between governments in this social policy area.     

Canadian Federalism in the 1990s: Once More in Question

Failure to ratify the Meech Lake Accord in 1990 has produceda constitutional crisis in Canada and sharpened the polarizationbetween Quebec and the rest of Canada. The future of Canadianfederalism and of Canada as a nation is now in question. Proceduralfactors contributing to the failure of Meech Lake included flawsin the constitutional amendment process, inadequate public involvement,distrust of executive federalism, inept political leadership,and ratification of the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Morefundamental factors, however, involve significant social andpolitical changes within Quebec and the rest of Canada. Thecrisis is expected to reach a peak by the fall of 1992 whenQuebec may hold a referendum on sovereignty.     

The Gradual Defederalization of Canadian Health Policy

Health policy is an important facet of territorial politics,drawing the contours of the sharing community. Changes in themanagement of the division of powers in health policy pointto shifting understandings of the federal political community.This article adopts this approach in the Canadian case, whereobservers disagree about whether values of federal diversityremain robust or are eroding. It considers three Commissions(Rowell-Sirois, Hall, and Romanow) reporting over a 60-yeartime span. The Commissions adopt different understandings ofthe division of powers and of the proper forms of intergovernmentalhealth governance, moving from a robust understanding of federaldiversity and the division of powers in the 1940s, to an afederalemphasis on efficiency and pan-Canadian citizenship in the early2000s.     

The Development of Carter's Urban Policy: One Small Step For Federalism

Proposals for a national urban policy underwent drastic revisionin the Carter White House after mid-January 1978. The followingarticle analyzes the evolution of the policy up to that change.     

Public Sector Politics, Modernization, and Federalism: The Canadian and American Experiences

The focus of this analysis is an attempt to compare Canadianand American federalism in terms of Samuel Beer's modernizationtheory. In Canada, it is argued that modernization had led tothe enhancement of provincial power rather than the centralizationof the federal system. The Westminster model of parliamentarygovernment contributed to these developments, although the wayin which power is organized in government has been even moreimportant in determining the directions taken by Canadian federalism.     

Environmental Policy, New Federalism and New Privatism: Policy Conflicts in the Coastal Zone

Public policies developed under the New Federalism of the 1970s and the new privatism of the 1980s have produced a variety of policy problems for states. This is particularly true in the area of environmental policy. This paper looks at environmental policymaking in the coastal zone giving particular attention to the conflicts between the desire to protect renewable resources and the need for economic growth in the coastal zone. These conflicts are illustrated by an examination of comprehensive land use planning in Oregon and the federal government's proposal to develop seabed mining on the Gorda Ridge.