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Advantages Of The Centralization Of Canadian Federation

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The level of centralization in the Canadian federation has greatly fluctuated since its formation in 1867 with the enactment of the British North America Act (*). At its beginning, the level of centralization and the amount of power in the hands of the federal government raised questions on whether or not Canada could even be considered a federation (*). Over time, a tendency towards decentralization emerged and changes to the application of the Constitution lead to more powers being shared across the provincial governments (*). Nowadays, it is widely believed that the Canadian federation is one of the most decentralized federations in the world. (https://lop.parl.ca/About/Parliament/senatoreugeneforsey/book/chapter_4-e.html). However, …show more content…

To be able to understand this concept, it important to understand the roles of the Canadian Constitution. On the one hand, it distributes the powers across the two levels of government (Hubbard & Paquet, 2011). On the other hand, it lays out how judicial interpretation should be applied at the federal level in regards to power distribution and decisions related to the application of the Constitution (Hubbard & Paquet, 2011). The very process places provincial governments in a position of subordinate since they are subject to the interpretation of the Constitution by federal judges of the Supreme Court of Canada (Hubbard & Paquet, 2011). Centralization occurs as a result of the constitutional distribution of powers enabling judicial decisions to be taken at the federal level (Hubbard & Paquet, 2011). It is noteworthy to mention that this phenomenon does not appear to result directly from the original text of the Constitution; the responsibility is on governmental practices that have developed from judicial interpretations of the division of powers (Hubbard & Paquet, 2011). Such judicial decisions are believed to shape the applications of the Constitution and the constitutional order in ways that lead to higher centralization and that put Canadian federalism at stake (Hubbard & Paquet,

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