Regional Interests and Policy in a Federal Structure

Abstract

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.