Donald V. Smiley

Territorialism and Canadian Political Institutions

A paper on political institutions may perhaps best begin with an assertion that institutions do matter. By matter in this context I mean that political institutions are important independent variables in determining first, the allocative outputs of political systems and second, the capacities of political systems to persist over time. Richard Simeon has put it this way, ... (political) institutions are not simply the outgrowth or products of the environment and they are not just dependent variables in the political system. They can be seen as independent forces, which have some effects of their own: once established they themselves come to shape and influence the environment (Simeon, 1975:504).1 There are really two propositions here. The first is that what Ralph Miliband has called the state system the complex of legislatures and cabinets and bureaucracies and courts and so on is decisive rather than a dependent superstructure of economy or society. The other is that within this state system the way that power is structured is of considerable significance. This paper is focussed on the second proposition. Turning away from institutions to the Canadian political environment for a moment, we can affirm that Canada is in the most elemental way a federal country in the sense that some of the most politically salient dimensions of human differentiation are territorially grouped.2 The provinces and regions differ greatly in their economic structures and their levels of social and economic development. The bulk of the French-speaking community is confined to Quebec and areas of Ontario and New Brunswick contiguous to Quebec and there is a secular trend toward the increasing territorial demarcation of the two linguistic communities (Joy, 1972). In several respects which are of consequence for the political system there are significant regional variations in popular attitudes. Yet we must interpret these latter differences with some caution. I am not convinced by Mildred Schwartzs analysis of the

The Three Pillars of the Canadian Constitutional Order

and/or superficial way. The mandate of the Macdonald Commission was almost impossibly broad and, at least so far as its institutional analysis is concerned, the Final Report showed that the Commissioners had no disposition to make this more manageable. Thus the Report makes judgments on matters as divergent, complex and contentious as the division of the Northwest Territories, reform of the Senate and the House of Commons, the appointment of judges, the institutions and processes of executive federalism, aboriginal self-government, provincialmunicipal relations, the relation between elected and appointed executive officials and so on. It would have been better, and I believe consistent with the Commissions Terms of Reference, to exclude some matters which are discussed in a superficial way. For example, the reform of political parties occupies less than a page of the Report. The Commissioners wrote that party reform is primarily a matter for the parties themselves to undertake (Vol. One, p.81) in disregard of the circumstance that th re is an ongoing process of legal recognition of the parties and that some of this, most importantly legislation related to party finance, directly influences the structures and operations of these organizations (Courtney, 1977:1). The Commissioners also make the important judgment that the links between federal and provincial parties should be strengthened without any reasons for this view. Other such examples of superficiality could easily be given. The style of the Report is measured and discursive, most of the important conclusions give some account of the view or views which were rejected. A unwary reader could thus be persudaded that the Commissioners were both omniscient and exceedingly judicious. A more critical view would be that this discursiveness was the result of a complex log-rolling process involving the Commissioners and their senior research staff and that