Canada’s provincial and territorial premiers want more collaboration and less unilateral decision making when it comes to the federal government.
Provincial and territorial leaders recently concluded their biannual meeting at the 2024 Council of the Federation in Halifax.
During the closing press conference of the meeting, various premiers urged the federal government to work with them instead of ignoring jurisdiction.
“We talked a lot about the current lack of cooperation from the federal government to the provinces and territories, which has resulted in missed opportunities, as we see federal programs that create duplicate processes that risk pitting provinces and territories, and really Canadians, against one another,” said Tim Houston, the council’s chair.
“There’s a lot we can do to collaborate because the current situation we have is not in the best interests of the federation as a whole,” he added.
Houston said the premiers have asked the federal government to work with the provinces as active partners when developing and executing federal programs.
The premier of New Brunswick, Blaine Higgs, said it’s more important now than ever that premiers and the federal government align on national issues.
“As we were talking amongst ourselves, it certainly seems that we are kind of replacing the federal government in many ways on some of the issues that are really important to our country,” he said.
While premiers didn’t explicitly blame the federal government for Canada’s immigration issues, many of them raised concerns about the rate at which their provinces were growing.
British Columbia Premier David Eby said that his province added 180,000 people to the province last year and urged the Bank of Canada to lower interest rates to help control inflation.
Alberta Premier Danielle Smith said that her province increased housing construction by 60% year-over-year, allowing Alberta to accommodate 100,000 people, half of the 200,000 that came to the province last year. She added that despite unprecedented spending on students, there are still 22,500 new students that remain unfunded.
The Liberals have implemented various policies already existing in provinces, only for them to be more expensive and serve fewer people.
“I think every Canadian would expect that all of their levels of government should try to pitch in and do everything they can to make their lives a little bit easier, but it gets a little bit frustrating with the duplication and the overstepping, so to speak, of the federal government,” said Dennis King, Premier of Prince Edward Island.
He said that his province already has a school food lunch program and a dental care program, which the Liberals have implemented nationwide at a much higher cost.
“We’re not asking the federal government to butt out. We’re asking them to say, let’s get to the table together. Let’s understand from your jurisdiction the same way Tim or I would do with our municipalities to say, ‘What do you need? How can we work together to achieve it? And how can we deliver the best results for Islanders and Canadians?’”
Ontario Premier Doug Ford raised similar concerns.
He said the Liberals introduced a $1 billion School Food Program to feed 400,000 kids over five years. However, Ontario’s program delivers almost 90 million meals and snacks to more than 600,000 school-aged children with an annual budget of $38 million.
“Something’s broken. They’re wasting taxpayers’ money. Go through the provinces, and you know what happens? Premiers get pissed. Simple as that. They jump in there and they think they know better than what we know. And we deal with it on a daily basis,” said Ford.
Most premiers commented on the carbon tax, applauding Manitoba and Saskatchewan for removing taxes and subsequently seeing lower inflation.
Smith said that when she removed her province’s fuel tax, Alberta had the lowest inflation too. However, it cost her province’s treasury $2 billion, money she said her province needs to build roads in the absence of adequate transportation funding in the last federal budget.
“We can’t keep cutting our own sources of revenue because the federal government refuses to cut theirs,” she said.
“So we want the federal government to restrict its, kind of, meddling, I guess, to federal government issues and leave provincial jurisdiction issues to the provinces. That’s what we want. And we want them to be our partner and support us,” said Houston.