{"id":268974,"date":"2020-12-02T11:30:18","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T16:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/issues\/overlapping-services-and-policies-have-tangled-up-the-federation\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T23:19:18","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T03:19:18","slug":"overlapping-services-and-policies-have-tangled-up-the-federation","status":"publish","type":"issues","link":"https:\/\/policyoptions.irpp.org\/fr\/2020\/12\/overlapping-services-and-policies-have-tangled-up-the-federation\/","title":{"rendered":"Overlapping services and policies have tangled up the federation"},"content":{"rendered":"

COVID-19 has contributed to unprecedented deficits for Canadian governments and heightened concerns about the long-term fiscal sustainability of several provinces. In response, Canada\u2019s premiers<\/a> are calling for increases to Canada Health Transfer and policy scholars are starting to raise questions<\/a> about the sustainability of Canada\u2019s broader system of fiscal federalism.<\/p>\n

Canadian fiscal federalism \u2013 that is, the fiscal relationships between different orders of government \u2013 hasn\u2019t been subjected to systematic review in a long time and it\u2019s showing. A combination of aging demographics<\/a>, a growing service delivery role<\/a> for cities, and the erosion of the long-term fiscal sustainability<\/a> of several provinces was already putting pressure on the system prior to the pandemic. These underlying changes have only been exacerbated over the past several months.<\/p>\n

Yet, as much as there may be a need for fundamental reform to Canadian fiscal federalism \u2013 including rethinking federal transfer payments and the revenue-generating capacities of our major cities \u2013 there\u2019s a risk that over-ambition ultimately collapses under the weight of intergovernmental, regional and ideological differences. Canadian history is replete<\/a> with examples of good intentions about reforming our federalism that failed to translate into meaningful reform.<\/p>\n

The risk, as we outline in a new paper<\/a> for Ontario 360 (a project at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy), is that a narrow focus on fundamental reforms risks forestalling political support for smaller-scale improvements to the functioning of Canadian federalism.<\/p>\n

In particular, the paper highlights the growing problem of what we refer to as \u201cintergovernmental entanglement.\u201d The basic idea here is that our different orders of government have slowly and almost imperceptibly become entangled in different areas of public policy and service delivery. This process of entanglement wasn\u2019t due to design or bad intentions but is mostly the consequence of a series of one-off decisions made in response to a combination of policy and political considerations. Many of these were no doubt justified in isolation.\u00a0 However, the net effect is a labyrinth of intergovernmental overlap and duplication across the three orders of government.<\/p>\n

For example, according to an Ontario 360 study<\/a>, there are no fewer than 280 provincial statutes and countless regulations, policies and service standards that affect how Ontario municipalities deliver services. And given municipalities\u2019 subordinate constitutional position, provincial governments can continue to impose statutes and regulations on them. This level of entanglement is only multiplied when one accounts for federal laws and policies that touch on provinces and municipalities.<\/p>\n

This can have various consequences including:<\/p>\n