The Dynamics of Federal-Provincial Bargaining

The rest of this analysis draws on data from the Canadian Elections Database.1² This section deals with evidence that the dynamics of intergov­ernmental negotiations are reflected in regional variation in support for the federal government as first ministers vie for bargaining power, the next with the degree to which provincial governments dominate their legislatures.

The intuition is that the more successful a first minister is in claiming to be the sole protector of provincial interests, the lower will be the regional vote for the party forming the federal government.1³ Figure 6.1 displays the average rank ordering of political parties by all districts in federal elections since 1867. The Liberals have been the dominant federal party in Canada, winning 19 of 29 elections and governing for more than 70 per cent of the ^{[39] [40] [41]}

figure 6.1 Average district electoral rank of major parties by election

last century. Conversely, other federal parties in the region will benefit elec­torally to the degree that a premier successfully paints the national govern­ment as a bargaining opponent.

The level of support the federal Liberals attracts in a province is used to guide thinking about the degree of bargaining independence enjoyed by a local first minister. To ease interpretation results are regonalized for Atlantic Canada and the prairies. In each case the provincial results are well correlated with the displayed regional results. We are looking for both long-term trends and episodic changes that might be related to periods of intense intergovern­mental negotiations. Low levels of regional support for the federal Liberals might coincide with periods when they were out of government.

Figure 6.2 captures federal Liberal support in Atlantic Canada. While there has been a gentle decline across the century, Atlantic Canada has sustained the highest and second-most stable support for the Liberals of any region. This level of support in a single-member plurality system is consistent with voters regularly rewarding the Liberals with most seats in the region. Volatility toward the end of the 20th century and into the 21st may well capture the beginning of change for Liberals in the region, although the extraordinary 2015 result sug­gests voters still believe it is in their interest to elect federal Liberals.

This is broadly consistent with the bargaining role played by maritime and then Atlantic Canada across the 20th century. After some initial resistance to confederation (notably in Nova Scotia) and some episodes across the century,

figure 6.2 Federal Liberal vote in AtlanticCanada

the region has generally been seen to work with rather than against the federal government in achieving its objectives. Episodic shifts in voter support for the federal government are muted. This suggests that regional first ministers do not demonize their national counterparts as competitors, at least not effec­tively, in the eyes of voters.^[42] Relative economic and demographic weakness combined with a traditional view of party politics may contribute to in this approach.

Figure 6.3 captures federal Liberal support in Ontario, which is compar­atively high. While lower than in the early days in Quebec, Ontario support for the Liberals has been relatively consistent with an average of around 40 per cent. Given the effects of single-member plurality voting, this suggests on average that Ontario voters deliver a majority of seats in the province to the Liberals. There are periods of serious decline, consistent with the pattern of Liberal defeats across the 20th century (Carty 2015), but the overall impres­sion is that Ontario does not exhibit long-term alienation from the federal Liberalbrand.

figure 6.3 Federal Liberal vote in Ontario

While Quebec has been pivotal in deciding government, this has only been possible because of the comparatively consistent support of Ontario voters (Johnston 2016). With the decline of support in Quebec, federal Liberal govern­ments have become increasingly Ontario-centric. Ontario voters may well con­sider that their influence on federal governments of any partisan stripe, given the weight of the Ontario vote in determining government formation, makes it theirs. It is possible that painting the federal government as antithetical to Ontario's interests is a difficult strategy for a premier to successfully pursue.

The rise of the Progressive Party in the 1920s, mainly in Ontario and the West, had its roots in tensions between farmers, labour and the economic pol­icies of the federal Liberal government under Laurier. Collapse in Liberal sup­port at this time may capture in part the demonizing of the federal government by provincial first ministers. Liberal collapse in the late 1950s coincides with the controversial end of the St Laurent government which had worked more than any government up to this time to bring federal and provincial first min­isters together to develop new economic and social policies. The early 1980s witnessed intense intergovernmental bargaining associated with patriation of the constitution followed by a period of fatigue as the decade progressed. Yet it is the stability of Ontario support for the federal government that is most notable, at least until its collapse in the post-Chretien period in the early 21st century.

figure 6.4 Federal Liberal vote in British Columbia

As shown in Figure 6.4, the federal Liberals have rarely been as popular in British Columbia as in Quebec or Ontario. While the long-term decline in support may look very western, the Liberals have not suffered quite as badly in bc as they have on the prairies or in Quebec.

British Columbia shares with the prairies some sense of alienation from Ottawa, yet a westward focus that reduces the pressure to engage stridently with the federation centred to its east. Although the trend in federal Liberal support is downwards, as in the prairies and Quebec, episodic losses have at times been partially recovered. The 1920s saw a more muted decline in support than on the prairies, but the St Laurent and Trudeau periods of intergovern­mental bargaining coincide with serious declines in Liberal support in bc is closest to that found in Quebec and the prairies with a somewhat higher aver­age over recent decades. This places it between these two and levels of support found in Ontario and Atlantic Canada. After some bleak outcomes in the early 21st century, the 2015 result in bc was better than on the prairies, suggesting greater resilience to the Liberal vote in the province.

figure 6.5 Federal Liberal vote inQuebec

Success in Quebec has been essential to the Liberals' long dominance of Canadian federal politics. Anyone aware of the history of intergovernmental relations and party politics with respect to Quebec will not be surprised by the results evident in Figure 6.5. Quebec has experienced the sharpest overall decline in Liberal vote share, in part because of high early results. From results often well above 50 per cent, the three elections from 2000 produced Liberal vote shares closer to 20 per cent While the pattern of support is cyclical, weak recovery in the Liberal vote since 1980 in the second most populous province maps the party's growing challenge in forming government.

The data are consistent with the growth in strategic independence gained by Quebec first ministers casting themselves as defenders of provincial inter­ests against the federal government. A slump in support in the 1950s during the Diefenbaker government is followed by recovery across the next two decades. The initial appeal of Pierre Trudeau's ‘new federalism' gave way to deep discon­tent at the conclusion of the patriation period in the 1980s. The alienation felt in Quebec over the treatment of Parti Quebecois premier Rene Levesque, his unwillingness to sign the constitution, and its eventual patriation despite this profoundly altered the relationship between provincial voters and the federal Liberal party. The arrival of the separatist Bloc Quebecois in Ottawa in 1993 fragmented the vote and hurt the Liberals in Quebec. The success of the NDP in 2011 may make it even harder for any one party to capture a high proportion

figure 6.6 Federal Liberal vote in the prairies

of votes. The Quebec data are consistent with the claim that over the 20th cen­tury Quebeckers came increasingly to see the federal government, in the guise of the dominant Liberals, as bargaining opponents in intergovernmental nego­tiations. Whether the 2015 result reverses the trend or is an exception awaits future elections.

The prairie results shown in Figure 6.6 suggest levels of disillusionment with the Liberals deeper than in neighbouring British Columbia and similar to those found in Quebec. Average early support of around 50 per cent of the vote for the Liberals starts somewhat below that found in Quebec. In reaching a similar level by the end of the period, the overall secular decline on the prairies is somewhat less than in Quebec.

From a relatively healthy starting point around 50 per cent, the very seri­ous decline seen during the Progressive era of the 1920s reset Liberal fortunes downward on the prairies.

The premiers of Quebec and the prairie provinces, notably Alberta, have been the most strident in presenting themselves as outsiders poorly treated by the federation and in need of bargaining room with which to pursue serious change. From the Balfour Report onwards, across disputes around provincial ownership of resources on the prairies and the Quiet Revolution in Quebec, the federal government has often been portrayed as the problem to be over­come. The data for bc are less emphatic, but still on balance supportive of this conclusion. Atlantic Canada and Ontario exhibit the least sensitivity to this hypothesis.

To summarize, the structure of regional support for federal Liberal govern­ments appears to conform broadly to the expectations of H2. There is general cross-period decline in three of five regions, and particularly in those that have had the most contentious relations with Ottawa. As well, episodic decline in all regions often coincides with periods of intense intergovernmental negotia­tions. Ontario, which has often played a key role in supporting the federal gov­ernment, has relatively symmetrical oscillations in support over time. Periods of deep decline arrive last in Atlantic Canada, a region that has worked more with than against federal governments.

Figure 6.7 summarizes the effect on regional federal Liberal support of a century of intergovernmental bargaining that reconstituted Canadian feder­alism. Executive federalism provided the Liberals a mechanism with which to both reconstruct and dominate federal politics. They used it to negotiate the disconnect between the constitution and federal political reality, integrate Quebec into the constitutional order, and domesticate the BNA Act to give expression to these changes. The period from 1921 to 1984 captures the era of peak federal government stability and likely negotiating power expressed as Liberal party dominance maintained by support in Quebec and Ontario. That is, unusual levels of support in Quebec combined with relatively high levels of support in Ontario after the 1930s underwrote this dominance and created a pivot around which intergovernmental negotiations moved. There is little doubt that this was essential to sustaining the ‘national party' status of the Liberal party across the 20th century.

Wilifred Laurier's desire to include Quebeckers in the federal conversa­tion began this process, and Pierre Trudeau's patriation of the constitution marked its end. The Liberals authority to renegotiate Confederation across these 60 years relied heavily on its capacity to internalize Canadian duality by maintaining support in both French-speaking Quebec and English-speaking Ontario. This was its route to electoral dominance. However, Quebec has never formally signed the constitution, and support for the Liberals in the province is now decoupled from the pattern found in Ontario. The extremely close 1995 referendum on Quebec separation is a sharp reminder of the limits of this pro­cess. Ontario and Atlantic Canada are now distinctive as the bedrock of Liberal

figure 6.7 Building a national Liberal government

support. The prairies anchor opposition to the Liberals along with bc, while Quebec has joined them in recentyears.

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