MacDoc

It always bugs me the arrangement of Canada's levels of gov with the GTA a municipality at one end of the scale outweighing most provinces and PEI at the other end smaller than many cities but a province in full.

How many would support a complete overhaul of the federation into 6 or 7 regions?

BC..... Alberta..... Man/Sask/Yukon,.....Ontario... Quebec..... Maritimes w or without NL
( NL might align with Nunavit for this purpose )

I'm just going to posit either as is or some variation of a new regional arrangement with details on the new set up.

Comments on what would work.

This consolidation has been done at the municipal level with reasonable success.
It would be hard but my question would it be worthwhile in your mind to attempt.??

I would think each region affected would have to "opt in" by say 60%.

I made the poll public ( and I voted as I have an opinion on this ) just to sort of see how it plays out around the nation.

Ideally I'd like to see those from "consolidated" areas state their reasons for or against as they have the most to lose or gain.

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Beej

I would support it, but it won't work under current or reasonably forseeable politics. For now the best thing is to make this federation work better (e.g. clearer lines of funding responsibility; provinces actively working together for national alignment).

MacDoc

Yeah I know it's a tough thing to undertake but eventually we will have to do it.
We're physically the second largest nation on earth and at some point population will at least start to get into the say Russian level ( they're coming down to meet us ).

The stresses are just going to get worse.
Australia seems better balanced with 5 regions.

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Macfury

Our obscenely large territory makes it difficult. I agree that we have to find something more appealing regarding balance of power, transfer payments, etc. under the current system first.

The Doug

Leave well enough alone. None of our current federal or provincial leaders has the vision, the willpower and stamina, or is trusted enough by their electorate to pull something like this off. It'd be easier to clean out the Augean Stable.

Beej

If you want to get into specifics on this thought exercise, the MB/SK/YK melange doesn't make sense. The North is quite different, not to mention that YK isn't connected with MB/SK and Saskatchewan's economy looks more like Alberta's than Manitoba's. That sort of approach would more favour an MB-Northern Ontario mix, and a single North.

What seems more fitting, and I've proposed before, is that it's really about urban power centres and rural regions. A reorganisation that results in fewer provinces would result in a less workable approach and magnify the current problems.

Resource ownership/royalties would be a significant complication for some specific regions, but less so than current complications. A new (completely unattainable) balance would have a number of regions with less power than current provinces but still significant powers. Think about the U.S.: similar land mass, 300 million people: organising it into 10 or so blocks, while it may look appealing in the ol' Red vs Blue debate, would create many more problems.

Contiguous rural/urban regions would maintain the important geographic and cultural diversity while dealing with the real ongoing national friction.

In my opinion, the primary problem (aside from basic fed vs. prov constitutional bickering, for example) is that federations like ours were designed with very different rural/urban population and economic balances. Things change but, in this case, 'things' have undergone tremendous change that favour a very different balance.

Realistically: back to the nitty gritty of fed-prov and prov-prov relations.

MacDoc

Augean stables???...Well perhaps that's a thought
Start at Ottawa

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MacDoc

I just threw that out as a sample region.
NL and Labrador have some physical distance to as does Alaska and the US so not directly connected is not 100% nonsensical.

I think a region needs some aspect of rural/resource and urban.

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Beej

Alaska, however, does not share non-Federal power.

Outside of the rural/urban issue then, what is the purpose of one type of region over another (ie. larger/smaller)? It needs some metrics of unity or explicity having diversity as a metric. If the metric is simply a constitutional power balance being closer to the the population/economic balance then the cure could be worse than the disease, so to speak.

Vandave

MacDoc... before I solve a problem I first try to define it.

We all know that there is an imbalance between our federal, provincial and municipal governments, which is a BIG problem in our country.

I don't understand how the number of provinces relates to your observation (e.g. GTA having more people than PEI). What exactly is the problem?

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