Suchergebnisse

Intergovernmental relations in Canada have tended to be viewed in light of the paper distribution of powers contained in the British North America Act, and, as a result, debate and research have focused on judicial interpretation and amendment as means of adapting inter governmental relations. The tremendous augmentation of governmental functions (and spending) at all levels has necessitated the creation of extra-constitutional mechanisms for providing the flexibility required to meet the con temporary trend toward the merging and blending of juris dictions that had been thought to exist in relatively watertight compartments. What is unique about the processes termed executive federalism is the way in which adjustment of regional and local relations tends to move to the top for resolution in a species of diplomatic conferences. While the new procedures have injected a realistic flexibility into the system, a high price is exacted in terms of Canada's capacity to arrive at an overall set of national policies.

Almost overnight, regionalism in Canada has become the current fashion and a subject for much intellectual speculation as well as administrative experimentation. This symposium is but one of many testimonials to the growing interest in the subject. In 1964, the Committee on Statistics of the Canadian Political Science Association considered the problem. Early in 1965, Queen's University sponsored a conference on areas of economic stress that was the forerunner to a much larger conference on regionalism convened by the Province of Ontario. The Institute of Public Administration of Canada selected regionalism as the theme for its autumn conference. Recent reports of a royal commission in New Brunswick and of a legislative committee in Ontario are implicitly concerned with regionalism in so far as they propose basic remodelling of the local government services in their respective provinces. The Resources Ministers Council is grappling with the concept, as are also the federal departments of Industry and of Agriculture. On the international plane, the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Columbia River development have projected more grandiose conceptions of regionalism. In short, regionalism, with concomitant regional administrative structures, is being advanced as an answer to the new problems of interdependence that cut across traditional political boundary lines, whether they be municipal, provincial, or national.The title chosen for this symposium suggests that regional interests are, indeed, a reality within the Canadian federal structure and that policy must accommodate itself not only to the familiar strains of dominion-provincial tensions but to the newer cross-currents of regionalism. The detailed implications of regionalism cannot be considered here, but resort to the analytical tools of the new school of systems analysts may help to develop certain general conclusions.