Open Federalism and the Spending Power: Canada: The State of the Federation 2008

by Allan, John R.; Courchene, Thomas J.; Adam, Marc-Antoine; Kong, Hoi

• ISBN13: 9781553391944
• ISBN10: 1553391942
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-05-30
• Publisher: McGill Queens Univ Pr

Summary

Whether considered from the perspective of constitutional law or that of political science, few, if any, areas of Canadian politics are more contested than the use of federal spending power. Initially presented at a conference sponsored by the Institute of Intergovernmental Relations and the Faculty of Law at Queen's University in January 2008, the papers in this book consider the topic of federal spending power from a variety of perspectives - legal scholars, political scientists, economists, past and present senior public servants, federal and provincial viewpoints, and critics and supporters are all represented in this comprehensive and accessible collection. Whether one believes that the federal spending power is a necessary safeguard for the protection and advancement of national interests in a decentralised federation or a threat to provincial autonomy from a powerful federal government, one will find reasoned support and criticism in these papers from a distinguished array of contributors. Contributors include Marc-Antoine Adam (Quebec Bar, Government of Quebec), Marc Chevrier (Université du Québec à Montréal), Thomas J. Courchene (Queen's University), Tom Kent (Queen's University), Hoi Kong (Queen's University), Andrée Lajoie (Université de Montréal), Harvey Lazar (Queen's University), Roderick A. Macdonald (McGill University and University of Toronto), Alain Noël (Université de Montréal), Andrew Petter (University of Victoria), and John Whyte (University of Saskatchewan).

Author Biography

John R. Allan is a Fellow and former Associate Director of The Institute of Intergovernmental Relations at Queen's University. He is also Vice-President Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Economics of the University of Regina. Thomas J. Courchene is a Fellow and former Director of The Institute of Intergovernmental Relations at Queen's University, where he is also the Jarislowsky-Deutsch Professor of Economics. He is also Senior Scholar, Institute for Research on Public Policy, Montreal. Marc-Antoine Adam is a member of the Quebec Bar and was Director of the Direction de la rflexion stratgique at the Secretariat aux affaires intergouvernementales canadiennes in the Quebec public service and Visiting Fellow at The Institute of Intergovernmental Relations at the time of the conference. Hoi Kong is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Law of McGill University, and occupied a similar position in the Faculty of Law at Queen's University at the time of the conference.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. vii
Introduction
Introduction	p. 3
The Spending Power: Context
Federalism Dreams	p. 19
The Political Economy of the Federal Spending Power	p. 41
Reflections on the Federal Spending Power: Practices, Principles, Perspectives	p. 85
The Spending Power and the Harper Government	p. 119
The Spending Power: Legal Considerations
Imperium in imperio? Des déséquilibres, du pouvoir fédéral de dépenser et du Constitutionnalisme au Canada	p. 133
How Do You Limit a Power That Does Not Exist?	p. 167
The Myth of the Federal Spending Power Revisited	p. 183
Section 36(1), New Governance Theory, and the Spending Power	p. 193
The Spending Power and Positive Law
Current Exercises of me Federal Spending Power: What Does the Constitution Say?	p. 245
The Spending Power, Cooperative Federalism, and Section 94	p. 261
Building Firewalls and Deconstructing Canada by Hobbling the Federal Spending Power: The Rise of the Harper Doctrine	p. 299
The Spending Power in Perspective
The Federal Spending Power Is Now Chiefly for People, Not Provinces	p. 317
Constitutional Change in the Twenty-First Century: A New Debate over the Spending Power	p. 327
Contributors	p. 339
List of Publications
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