Federal government has the means and responsiblity to persuade and cajole provinces in certain directions when it comes impacts of policies they are implementing. They could have foreseen the housing shortage or the unemployment or the depressed wages with the immigration, foreign workers and foreign student programs they are creating, because that’s what the hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats in various government agencies are for - to plan and study all the freakin impacts- but didn’t foresee it or chose to ignore it, having faith in the “markets” to solve needs of the economy. Alas, the “markets” are slow moving and not efficient at all.
I think it’s more difficult than you imagine to persuade provinces to go along with them, almost anything that might infringe on provincial jurisdiction is going to be challenged by at least Quebec and Alberta. I also don’t believe we, here in 2024 with the benefit of hindsight, can fairly criticize the government for not foreseeing how the last few years have gone.
It’s not automatic that provinces will follow the Feds. But the Feds have sticks and carrots to motivate provinces. It’s politics. What provincial government wants to be seen BLOCKING a federal program to create more housing? That’s one of the sticks - politics through the media.
Certain provincial governments have developed a tendency to scream “but jurisdiction!” about any federal policy that might affect them, whether or not it’s useful or justified to do so and regardless of what other stimuli are applied.
Federal government has the means and responsiblity to persuade and cajole provinces in certain directions when it comes impacts of policies they are implementing.
I’m not going to defend Trudeau. Not on any front.
But this is a bad take. Any federal government taking a take-it-or-leave-it approach to the provinces is attempting to operate as a dictatorship, and it’s something that should be actively resisted or rejected.
The problem right now is that there are a lot of Conservative Premieres, and they can taste blood in the water, so they’re circling and stonewalling.
AFAICT the federal daycare deal, dental care, measures to address the housing crisis, and price on carbon were implemented by negotiating/cajoling the provinces. Generally speaking, I believe those were mostly successful initiatives that help Canadians.
Dental care, housing deals with cities and the fall back carbon pricing were all done dispite provincial pushback (as far as I’m aware).
The only one where they worked with the provinces was the daycare, and that took like 18 months for provinces to actually agree on and even today provinces like Ontario continue to drag their feet on.
From what I’ve seen over the last 3-5 years, the provinces have very little interest in actively working constructively with the feds.
I don’t know what the current status of the healthcare chats are, but a few years ago the feds were willing to help push additional funding into the provincial healthcare systems, but the provinces needed to agree to terms (I believe the terms were around the money needing to be spent on the public healthcare system and not working towards privatization). as far as I know the talks never went anywhere, and healthcare systems are still underfunded.
Federal government has the means and responsiblity to persuade and cajole provinces in certain directions when it comes impacts of policies they are implementing. They could have foreseen the housing shortage or the unemployment or the depressed wages with the immigration, foreign workers and foreign student programs they are creating, because that’s what the hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats in various government agencies are for - to plan and study all the freakin impacts- but didn’t foresee it or chose to ignore it, having faith in the “markets” to solve needs of the economy. Alas, the “markets” are slow moving and not efficient at all.
I think it’s more difficult than you imagine to persuade provinces to go along with them, almost anything that might infringe on provincial jurisdiction is going to be challenged by at least Quebec and Alberta. I also don’t believe we, here in 2024 with the benefit of hindsight, can fairly criticize the government for not foreseeing how the last few years have gone.
It’s not automatic that provinces will follow the Feds. But the Feds have sticks and carrots to motivate provinces. It’s politics. What provincial government wants to be seen BLOCKING a federal program to create more housing? That’s one of the sticks - politics through the media.
Certain provincial governments have developed a tendency to scream “but jurisdiction!” about any federal policy that might affect them, whether or not it’s useful or justified to do so and regardless of what other stimuli are applied.
I’m not going to defend Trudeau. Not on any front.
But this is a bad take. Any federal government taking a take-it-or-leave-it approach to the provinces is attempting to operate as a dictatorship, and it’s something that should be actively resisted or rejected.
The problem right now is that there are a lot of Conservative Premieres, and they can taste blood in the water, so they’re circling and stonewalling.
AFAICT the federal daycare deal, dental care, measures to address the housing crisis, and price on carbon were implemented by negotiating/cajoling the provinces. Generally speaking, I believe those were mostly successful initiatives that help Canadians.
Dental care, housing deals with cities and the fall back carbon pricing were all done dispite provincial pushback (as far as I’m aware).
The only one where they worked with the provinces was the daycare, and that took like 18 months for provinces to actually agree on and even today provinces like Ontario continue to drag their feet on.
From what I’ve seen over the last 3-5 years, the provinces have very little interest in actively working constructively with the feds.
I don’t know what the current status of the healthcare chats are, but a few years ago the feds were willing to help push additional funding into the provincial healthcare systems, but the provinces needed to agree to terms (I believe the terms were around the money needing to be spent on the public healthcare system and not working towards privatization). as far as I know the talks never went anywhere, and healthcare systems are still underfunded.