The Red River Rebellion

The Federal System

Introduction

Although the Canadian political community has endured for over 130 years, it has been subject to persistent internal strains that threaten its cohesion. These strains reflect the fundamental difficulty of creating a political community within a vast territory encompassing several regions with distinctive interests and distinctive identities. In this and the following chapters, we will explore the nature of the strains that have imperilled Canadian unity and the methods that have been adopted to try to alleviate them. This chapter will set the context for the others by providing an overview of the evolution of the institutions and processes of the Canadian federal system.

The Federal System:

Distribution of Powers

The founders of confederation settled on a federal system for two reasons. First, assigning jurisdiction over language and religion to the provinces was a means to insulate national politics from the divisive conflicts over these issues which had impaired the effectiveness of the union of Canada East and Canada West, established in 1840. Second, a federal system would accommodate the strong sense of regional community attachment and help allay the mistrust of the government of Canada that existed in the Maritime colonies. The founders envisaged a new state in which the two levels of government would have distinctive spheres of authority that would enable them to function in relative independence of one another.

The distribution of powers in the British North America Act incorporated objectives that were not easily reconciled. The