Federalism Celebrated in Canada and the U.S. This Week – Is There a Future for This Form of Government in the 21st Century?

July 2, 2020 – Yesterday was Canada Day, a celebration of confederation, the forming of the country in which I live back in 1867. This week, as well, celebrates Independence Day in the United States. Both countries are federal states which by definition means a combination of several independent, self-governing political entities joined together in a common, centralized system of government.

Where Canadian federalism was born in incremental, and largely peaceful stages out of its British parent, (not including the short-lived and unsuccessful 1837 rebellion,) U.S. federalism emerged after thirteen separate colonies united in revolt against the Mother Country in 1776 and in a protracted conflict won independence by 1783.

Nothing like these two entities existed on Earth before their emergence in the late 18th and mid-19th century, and both have become models for subsequent attempts to create federal states.

As political experiments, Canada and the United States are far from perfect. Why?

1. Both were built on land already inhabited by indigenous peoples who were self-governing.
2. Both ignored the original inhabitants after signing treaties in the process of colonial-driven nation-building.
3. Both have continued to not address the original inhabitants as full members with status equal to the initial participants that formed the federation.
4. Both were formed from largely European settlers defining the original inhabitants as less than equal to the colonizers.
5. In the United States, and for a short time in Canada, forced migration and enslavement of Africans brought across the Atlantic Ocean, created an underclass and unfree people with no rights.

Today, both countries are continuing to pay for their original sins in the marginalizing of indigenous people, and the enslavement of Africans unwillingly brought to North America.

Canada’s Promises and Failings

Canada, unlike the United States, was formed as a federation of two linguistic and culturally separate groups of European origin. The British conquest of French Canada in 1763 was unique in its aftermath. Whereas Britain in previous colonial wars with France after conquests expelled defeated colonists, in the case of Canada, accommodated both the French language, customs, and law codes for the conquered people.

The English-speaking parts of Canada largely came about during the American Revolution when loyalists abandoned their homes and moved to the remaining British-held territories in North America.

Today, Canada is no longer a nation divided by English and French-speaking citizens. It spans the northern half of the continent of North America and is populated by people from all over the world. The country is no longer European in flavour having brought millions of immigrants to its shores from Asia, Africa, and the Americas.

Finally, since 2015 the federal government has attempted to remedy the past with the nation’s indigenous inhabitants recognizing them as founding peoples before Confederation, and equal partners going forward. The effort, so far, only begins to address the inequities and injustices of the past, the land, and charter treaties dating back to British control, and claims. Land claims based on British crown treaties are still disputed. And more recently, concerns about the environment and sustainable resource management have led to conflicts between indigenous people and the descendants of the colonizers. There remains a great degree of reconciliation to be done to complete the federal experiment.

In the post-pandemic country, will it transition from a federation of provinces and territories to one that also recognizes indigenous people as equal members on an equal footing to Canada’s provinces completing the federal experiment?

United States’ Promises and Failings

The United States was the first to create a federal experiment. It built a nation for largely European colonists that provided them with religious and other freedoms not possible before its formation. The United States created the federal mould for others to follow.

The federal experiment’s biggest failing, however, was the institution of slavery which became embedded in its Constitution and governance. In the end, the Civil War of 1861 to 1865 ended with emancipation of African Americans, but not equality. Reconstruction after 1865 did little to create equality, and Jim Crow laws that were put in place in the late 19th century produced a racialized underclass in permanent subservience.

The second failing of the United States was its marginalizing, displacement, and slaughter of indigenous peoples who mandated by government policy were driven from their ancestral lands.

How can you reconcile the forced immigration and employment of African Americans who played a significant role in the building of the country without compensation for their efforts? Are reparations owed to their descendants? Can America rid itself of the Constitutional baggage of the Electoral College, a legacy of its slave past? When will the United States address the failures of its historic policies towards its indigenous inhabitants giving them equal status within the federation?

We are currently being reminded of the failures in the federalist model of the United States in movements such as Black Lives Matter, and of legacies of indigenous injustice such as the slaughter of the Lakota tribe at Wounded Knee in December 1890.

The Federal Experiment Elsewhere

Today’s federal states in addition to the ones above include Argentina Australia, Brazil, and India. The opposite of these is unitary states with some offering a level of local government. Russia describes itself as a federation, but in effect is a unitary state. China is a unitary state. Great Britain and Spain are unitary states where local autonomy has been granted to areas that have distinct linguistic or cultural differences. There are more unitary models than federal ones around the globe.

Emerging from the European experiment that began with the post-war economic community, is the European Union (EU), a very different federal experiment than either Canada or the United States. It remains whether by mid-century the EU will truly become a federation or dissolve into its national components.

And finally, very much in the mode of Europe and the economic community that preceded the EU, Africa has begun to form a continental free-trade zone that could lead to a new federation by the end of the century. Africa, like Europe, has to overcome language and cultural differences.

More on Europe, Africa, and federalism in a future blog posting. Watch for it.