Under Canada's federal system, the powers of government are shared between the federal government and 10 provincial governments. The provinces are responsible for public schooling, health and social services, highways, the administration of justice, and local government. However, overlapping and conflicting interests have stretched provincial concerns across virtually every area of Canadian life. Provinces are free to determine their own levels of public services, and each province has been true to its economic and cultural interests in its own fashion.
Rise of Provincial Power
Confederation
Canada's original constitutional arrangements were far from those of a perfect or ideal federal state. The Fathers of Confederation envisaged a federal union tilted toward a strong central government. The powers of the federal government to disallow provincial statutes within one year of their passage; to appoint provincial lieutenant-governors; to declare provincial works to be for the general advantage of Canada or two or more provinces; to appoint judges of superior, district and county courts (see Judiciary); and to enjoy broad lawmaking powers all confirm the intended junior status of provincial governments.
However, the evolution of Canadian society — despite the centralizing swings occasioned by the two world wars and the Great Depression of the 1930s — has long eroded this early sense of provincial subordination. Although not all contemporary provincial governments have been as assertive as those of Québec or Alberta, most claim a more equal partnership today with Ottawa.
The terms of Confederation gave the central government the primary role in promoting an economic union and in stimulating national economic expansion through the development of transportation links (railways, harbours and canals) and other forms of public-policy support (see Railway History). By the 1880s the momentum behind nation building had slowed and was soon overtaken by the rise of provincially-based political and economic needs and desires.
Strong Leadership, Valuable Resources
Other elements also helped enhance the status of provincial governments: The strong political leadership of provincial spokesmen such as Ontario's Oliver Mowat, Québec's Honoré Mercier and Nova Scotia's William Fielding; Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier's more sympathetic attitude towards the provinces; the development, in various provinces, of resource-based economic interests (see Resource Rights); and the emergence of a provincial bent in the decisions of Britain's Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on the distribution of federal-provincial powers.
The provincial governments always played some role in their regional economic development through public investment in transportation and the growth of their public education systems. The expansion of these activities and the later growth of social assistance, health and hospital programs in the 1960s and 1970s changed the original conception and broadened the scope of provincial government.