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A comparative perspective on the distinctive feature of the Canadian policy process enabling conflict resolution

Policy and Politics in Canada

Institutionalized Ambivalence

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Carolyn J. Tuohy

At a time when Canadian political institutions are being fundamentally questioned, this book provides a comparative perspective on the distinctive features of the Canadian policy process hich have enabled conflict to be resolved in the past. In comparison with other Western industrial nations, Canada's policies in some arenas appear as models of workable compromise; in others, they stand out as marked by continuing irresolution. In this first book-length treatment of Canadian public policy in comparative perspective, Carolyn Tuohy focuses on constitutional change, health care delivery, industrial relations and labor market policy, economic development and adjustment, oil and gas policy, and minority language rights.

What distinguishes Canada's characteristic policy process is its quintessential ambivalence: ambivalence about the appropriate role of the state, about definitions of political community, and about individual and collective values and conceptions of rights. Embedded in the country's political institutions, it has deep roots in Canada's relationship to the United States, its history of English-French tensions, and its regional diversity.

Examining in particular the delicate federal-provincial division of power and the legislative-judicial relationship, Tuohy discusses how the constitutional debates of the 1980s and 1990s are testing Canada's institutions to resolve conflict.

Editors' Preface
Preface

1. Introduction
The Roots of Ambivalence
The Institutionalization of Ambivalence
The Organization of Interests
Conclusions
Notes

2. Constitutional Change
Context
Agenda
Process
Consequences
Readings
The Péquiste Manifesto • The Federal Response to Quebec's Constitutional Agenda • The Quebec Referendum • Entrenched Rights versus Parliamentary Supremacy • The Quebec Liberals' Constitutional Position during the 1980 Referendum Campaign • The Meech Lake Accord (Excerpts) • Trudeau's Criticism of the Accord • One Legislator's Ambivalence
Notes

3. Health Care Delivery
Context
Agenda
Process
Consequences
Readings
A Health Charter for Canadians • Governmental Insurance and Clinical Judgment: A Medical View • The Canadian Medical Association and Canadian Medicare • The Canadian Nurses Association and Canadian Medicare • A Consumers' Coalition Seeks a Community-Based Health Plan • Extra-Billing and the Universality of Social Programs • The Medical Profession Seeks a Partnership with Government • The Policy Agenda of the 1990s at the Provincial Level
Notes

4. Industrial Relations and Labour-Market Policy
Context
Agenda
Process
Consequences
Readings
The Business View of Labour-Management Cooperation • Labour's Approach to Social Partnership • Government as a Catalyst in Labour-Management Cooperation • An Evaluation of Government Adjustment Assistance • Labour on Collective Bargaining and Labour-Market Policy
Notes

5. Economic Development and Adjustment
Context
Agenda
Process
Consequences
Readings
The BCNI Critique of Canadian Industrial Policy • Labour's Goals: Full Employment and Greater Public Control • The Macdonald Commission on Canada-U.S. Trade • Labour's Focus on Full Employment • The Commons Debate on the Free Trade Agreement
Notes

6. Oil and Gas Policy
Context
Agenda
Process
Consequences
Readings
The Gordon Commission's View of Foreign Investment in Canadian Oil • Western Canadian Resistance to the National Energy Program • The Federal Defence of the National Energy Program • The Business Community and the National Energy Program • Federal and Provincial Powers over Natural Resources
Notes

7. Minority Language Rights
Context
Agenda
Process
Consequences
Readings
Trudeau on Language Rights • Lévesque on Francophones outside Quebec • The Manifesto of Quebec's Radical Nationalists • The Union Nationale Government on the Status of French • The Courts on Linguistic Education Rights • Language Rights in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom • The Commissioner of Official Languages on Multiculturalism
Notes

8. Competence and Crisis: Canada's Ambivalent Institutions
Elite Accommodation: The Role of Mediating Interests
Partisanship and Federalism
The Need for Institutional Change
Summary

References
Index

About the Author(s)

Carolyn J. Tuohy is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto.

Subject Categories

Political Science and Public Policy

In the series

Policy and Politics in Industrial States, edited by Douglas E. Ashford, Peter J. Katzenstein, and T.J. Pempel.

Each volume in Policy and Politics in Industrial States, edited by Douglas E. Ashford, Peter J. Katzenstein, and T.J. Pempel, is a sophisticated textbook that focuses on a single country but in a comparative policy context. Each consists of a balance of analysis and primary documents for six major issues. The issues include topics like economic policy, labor relations, social welfare, and the internal organization of the state.