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Constitutional Change and Public Policy: The Impact of the Resource Amendment (Section 92A)*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Marsha A. Chandler
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Abstract

This article examines the effect of the resource amendment (section 92A) on Canada's political economy. The analysis of the consequences of section 92A moves beyond the immediate changes in the distribution of legislative jurisdiction to examine the broader political implications. It is argued that the resource amendment is politically significant in several respects. It removes certain irritants from federal-provincial relations. By augmenting and clarifying provincial powers, the provinces' role in resource development is strengthened. The expansion of provincial legislative capacity gives the provinces more legitimacy and power at the political bargaining table.

Résumé

La nouvelle constitution du Canada traite explicitement du partage des pouvoirsen matière de ressources naturelles. Pour saisirtoutes les implications politiques de Particle 92A, il faut aller au-delà des changements dans les dispositions constitutionnelles et plutôt en analyser les effets sur les relations économiques intergouvernementales. relations que le texte de 1982 devrait rendre plus sereines en éliminant un certain nombre d'« irritants » et en clarifiant le rôle des provinces dans le développement des ressources naturelles. L'accroissement de I'autorité législative des provinces leur confere une plus grande légitimité et plus de poids politique dans leurs negociations avec le gouvernement fédéral.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1986

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References

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2 Although the new Charter of Rights and Freedoms may also have some eventual effecton the resource industry, section 92A can be expected to be the main agent of anysignificant impact. For potential implications of the charter on natural resources, see Lucas, A. R., “Natural Resources and the Constitution.” Resources: The Newsletterof the Canadian Institute of Resources Law (September 1982).Google Scholar and Ballem, J. B.. “Oiland Gas Under the New Constitution,” Canadian Bar Review 61 (1983). 556–58Google Scholar

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20 Chandler, Marsha A., “The Politics of Provincial Resource Policy,” in Atkinson, Michael M. and Chandler, Marsha A. (eds.), The Politics of Canadian Policy (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1983), 4368.Google Scholar Some provinces like Alberta, raised royalty rates; others, like Manitoba, instituted new forms of revenue collection like the super royalty. In each case the object was to give provinces a share in the economic rents that would have gone to the industry. Within the provinces there was also a greater appreciation of many of the social costs of resource development including: building infrastructure, the vulnerability to boom-and-bust cycles of one-industry mining towns, and environmental damage. On the tax battles, see Brown, R.. “The Fight Over Resource Profits,” Canadian Tax Journal 19 (1974). 315–31.Google Scholar On provincial management strategies, see for example, Richards and Pratt, Prairie Capitalism. chaps. 7, 8, 9, 10; and various studies of the Queen's University Centre for Resource Studies, including Ron Murray, Provincial Mineral Policies: Saskatchewan 1944–1944 (1978), and Owen, B. and Kops, W., The Impact of Policy Changes oii Decisions in the Mineral Industry (1979).Google Scholar

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23 Chandler, “The Politics of Provincial Resource Policy.”

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42 Reference Re the Offshore Mineral Rights of British Columbia [1967] S.C.R. 792, and Reference Re Property In and Legislative Jurisdiction Over the Seabed and Subsoil of the Continental Shelf Offshore Newfoundland [1984] S.C.R. 86.

43 See Thring, “Alberta, Oil and the Constitution,” 81–81.

44 See Meekison and Romanow, “Western Advocacy and Section 92A of the Constitution.”

45 Norrie points out that through much of the 1970s the federal government's view of nation-building was in fact a view that sought to preserve central Canadian dominance rather than to promote wealth-inducing regional and sectoral shifts of resources (“Energy, Canadian Federation and the West”).

46 See Toner, Glen and Bregha, F., “The Political Economy of Energy.” in M. S. Whittington and Glen Williams, Canadian Politics in the 1980s (Toronto: Methuen, 1981), 2223.Google Scholar

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