The Council of the Federation: From a Defensive to a Partnership Approach

Abstract

In its most benign form, the Council of the Federation sketched out in Charlottetown could be merely a formalizing of the Annual Premiers’ Conferences that have been held for decades, and the consecration of the essentially defensive mission of these meetings in reaction to the unitary and domineering federalism as practised by Ottawa. With a permanent secretariat and better equipped working groups, like the one that will be examining the fiscal imbalance between the federation’s two orders of government, such a council would lend more intellectual and political weight to the traditional demands of the provinces and territories in their fight against the “take-itor-leave-it” federalism à la Jean Chrétien. However, such a council would in fact only be a more dignified version of the “ganging-up” and “fed-bashing” strategy that has already been deployed without much success by the provinces for too many years.