The Two Themes of Canadian Federalism

Canadian federal experience has centred around two major themes. The first relates to cultural dualism, the desire and ability of French- and English-speaking Canadians to survive as such and to use the governmental institutions which they respectively dominate in order to ensure this outcome. The second involves public action to meet the material expectations of individuals and groups living within an economy where burdens and benefits have been determined largely by the economic policies of successive federal administrations. Those who have concerned themselves with Canadian federalism have usually believed, explicitly or implicitly, that either the cultural or the economic problem was the major challenge which the federal system faced. Thus there are two versions of what our constitutional arrangements are all about, and these are most strikingly illustrated by the divergent perspectives of the Rowell-Sirois and Tremblay Commission. The former was almost exclusively concerned with the reallocation of revenues, revenue sources, and functional responsibilities between the two levels of government and did not deal in any explicit way with the impact of existing or proposed arrangements on the survival of the two cultures. To the Tremblay Commission the great theme of our constitutional history since Confederation is the attempt of English-speaking Canada to subvert the original federal compact and the resistance of these attempts by French Canadians; its Report does deal in great detail with economic issues but its basic argument is that the essential and permanent value of Canadian federalism is to make possible the survival of the two cultural groups.