A mighty wind

News leaked out of the Premier’s Office in Ontario this month that the provincial government was considering moving out of the joint income tax arrangement, under which individual taxpayers in all provinces except Quebec file a single return to the national revenue service, and the provincial share of the taxes is sent on to the provincial governments.

Apart from facing the happy prospect of Ontarians filling in two tax returns rather than one — and paying for a separate provincial bureaucracy to collect them — this trial balloon was carried aloft by the same wind that is stirring up some other abrasive political dust. The provinces are back, and they want more power.

Thus, also, the reeking gift thrust in Canadians’ faces by the provincial premiers, a new “council of the federation.” In the past this rose has gone by other names, including “premiers’ conference” and “ten guys in suits.” From the premiers’ perspective, it provides two benefits: it lets provincial governments speak in a single voice when trying to trench on the criminal law, pretend to make international treaties, or strip the national government of the power to regulate national commerce; and it’s a great employment opportunity for highly placed and highly paid provincial apparatchiks with too little to do.

The premiers’ announcement raised some predictable questions about the “creation of a new bureaucracy,” a demonstration of the media’s tin ear on political and constitutional matters. More useful information can be drawn from a different line of enquiry: just what moves provincial premiers to pretend they play on the national stage? We think there are two reasons: one bad and unnecessary; one worse but understandable.

The first is the traditional power-grab, to which premiers are conditioned by habit of mind and by the pressure of group-think. Politicians we have with us always; and it is in their nature to stick their noses in as many places as they can, on the slimmest legal pretext. And these politicians are surrounded by political advisors and senior civil servants whose careers depend on the advancement of provincial government power. (It is a tribute to the thoroughness and foresight of the Fathers of Confederation that the heads of power they put in the 1867 Act divided jurisdiction neatly and lastingly; it is no less a comment on the premiers’ honesty that they never tell the public that jurisdiction is a zero-sum game.)

That is no surprise, but it should be seen for what it is, rather than swallowed whole by the gullible acolytes of “co-operative federalism,” whatever that phrase is meant to convey this week. The country has a constitution: provincial premiers should learn their place and keep to it, rather than look for ways to get around the law of the land.

The second reason is that the provinces, when they have chosen to co-operate, have provided useful leadership in many areas where their legislative competence is well-established. Inter-provincial co-ordinating bodies such as the Canadian Securities Administrators and the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment have been successful at developing some regulatory regimes common to all provinces.

Largely they have done this because the national government has managed to leave a vacuum in these areas of jurisdiction. In securities regulation, for example, the provinces have taken the lead out of necessity in an area where the national government, lacking both the legal standing to regulate the business and the political will to transfer securities law to its jurisdiction, feared to tread.

In environmental regulation, where national standards exist at all, the provinces have been the architects, not least because the Department of the Environment lacks both enforcement clout and on-the-ground experience.

It is true that unelected bureaucracies, created over the heads of the voters by provincial governments, should not be doing this job in a democracy; but it is also true that the provinces’ hands have been forced by a national government that would rather leave some areas well enough alone, however badly national action might be needed.

It is not good for the country that politicians at the national level think they have better things to do with their time; for that is what excuses the grandiose pretence of the premiers to do what the national government should do, and doesn’t.