CPA special issue 2009: Federalism, public policy and municipalities – Introduction

It is with great pleasure that we introduce this special issue of Canadian Public Administration on “federalism, public policy and municipalities.” It has been a number of years since municipal government and its relationship to federalism, in particular, has been featured in the Journal. This series of federal overview studies is intended to inform subsequent studies of federal involvement in specific policy fields and of federal interventions especially salient to Canadian municipalities. The first five articles are the outgrowth of the SSHRC-funded Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) project “Multilevel Governance and Public Policy in Canadian Municipalities.” The project was funded in 2004 for five years and has involved more than ninety scholars in all provinces, and almost as many graduate students. The project has been directed by Dr. Robert Young of the University of Western Ontario. It has been the subject of two conferences, and a third, “Cities and Public Policy,” co-sponsored by the Institute of Public Administration of Canada, takes place in September 2009 in Toronto, Canada. The project has produced three books, and more are forthcoming. The goal has been not only to focus attention on multilevel governance and municipal government but to look towards practical improvements. To that end, this issue should be of interest to both academics and practitioners. For more information about the project, please visit http://www.ppm-ppm.ca. The first question to be asked as part of the overview is why municipal policy issues rise on the federal policy agenda in Canada. Robert Young and Kelly McCarthy have undertaken the first systematic study of this question, examining the rise and fall of municipal policy issues, between Confederation and 2005. From their analysis, three logical explanations of why and when municipal issues might rise on the federal agenda – rapid population growth in cities, significant municipal restructuring, and municipal financial stress – are not borne out in any systematic way. They have concluded that history and the specifics of the moment may be determining factors. We then proceed to two articles that look at the institutions of government at the federal level for municipal issues. Christopher Stoney and Katherine Graham provide an overview of the federal machinery, while John Chenier looks at the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Canadian municipalities' lobby in Ottawa. Stoney and Graham examine the risks and rewards of federal involvement in municipal affairs. Examining the period since the 1960s, they conclude that there have been three eras of federal involvement. In each case, a variety of organizational approaches and instruments have been used. However, over time, the focus has shifted from building machinery to buying influence. Chenier analyses the approaches that the FCM has used to sustain itself, in the face of ongoing tensions that result from its membership base and structure. He also assesses its role as an advocate and as a think tank on policy for its membership and the federal government. He argues for a strengthened policy research role, both to serve its membership and the federal government, which he views as having a dearth of policy expertise on municipal matters. Katherine Graham and Gene Swimmer examine the locus of federal intelligence about municipalities by looking at the distribution of federal employment across Canada. After looking at federal reports on public-service reform and other third-party analyses and conducting their own regression analysis to explain the variations in the relative federal presence across local areas and over time, they conclude that an “Ottawa syndrome” remains predominant. Federal employment is growing in the National Capital Region relative to other locations. Furthermore, NCR employment is more “knowledge-based” than elsewhere. This suggests potential challenges for local understanding at the federal level. It is impossible to have a full understanding of public policy and municipalities without looking at fiscal federalism. The article by Fabio Bojorquez, Eric Champagne and François Vaillancourt provides this important background. They look at the impact of federal grants on capital expenditures by municipalities, from 1988 to 2008, and note that the recent transition from a Liberal to a Conservative government has not resulted in a decrease in grant levels. Overall, this article concludes that there is a “flypaper effect” of federal capital grants to municipalities. These grants do shape municipal expenditure on infrastructure, including municipal investment of own-source revenues. In the case of a number of federal infrastructure programs, the role of provinces as intermediaries and funding partners is also crucial. This special issue concludes with an article by Jean-François Simard, which provides a provincial parallel about the dynamics of provincial-local relations in an attempt to realize a “grand plan” for local development. He looks at the history and impact of the Bureau d'aménagement de l'Est du Québec and its failure to deliver as a comprehensive planning agency for the eastern part of Quebec. The exigencies of federal-provincial dynamics around the Quiet Revolution and the 1969 regional development agreement are an important element in this case study.

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