Subnational Activity and Foreign Economic Policy Making in Canada and the United States: Perspectives on Agriculture

Abstract

Politicians in Ottawa have frequently pointed to the nature of Canadian federalism as an impediment to coherent and coordinated economic policy making in Canada. In doing so, they have sometimes been tempted to compare their own situation with that of their counterparts in the United States. The agriculture sector illustrates this point in a particularly clear fashion. On a number of occasions when he was minister of agriculture in the 1970s, Eugene Whelan explained his inability to develop a national agri-food policy for Canada by reference to the limitations of his jurisdiction as opposed to that of the United States secretary of agriculture. In his typically blunt fashion, Mr Whelan informed his audience that governors in the United States 'do not have nearly the authority our provinces do in Canada' and that when the secretary of agriculture makes a decision he does not discuss it with the state directors of agriculture, but 'informs them of the decision he has made.'1 Few analysts would disagree that the administration of agricultural policy has evolved differently in Canada than in the United States; one need only note the range of marketing boards under the jurisdiction of the Canadian provinces. This conventional emphasis on differences, however, has tended to obscure the fact that the United States states have followed the lead of the Canadian provinces