Question

Do you find that Federalism is a legal term or is it an organizational principle in the political or social realm?

Answer 1

Federalism Definition:

A system of government which has created, by written agreement, a central and national government to which it has distributed specified legislative (law-making) powers, called the federal government, and regional or local governments (or sometimes called provinces or states) to which is distributed other, specified legislative powers.

"In a federal system of government such as ours, political power is shared by two orders of government: the federal government on the one hand, and the provinces on the other. Each is assigned respective spheres of jurisdiction by the Constitution Act, 1867.

"(F) Federalism is a political and legal response to underlying social and political realities.

"The principle of federalism recognizes the diversity of the component parts of Confederation, and the autonomy of provincial governments to develop their societies within their respective spheres of jurisdiction. The federal structure of our country also facilitates democratic participation by distributing power to the government thought to be most suited to achieving the particular societal objective having regard to this diversity. The scheme (is) not to weld the Provinces into one, nor to subordinate Provincial Governments to a central authority, but to establish a central government in which these Provinces should be represented, entrusted with exclusive authority only in affairs in which they had a common interest. Subject to this, each Province was to retain its independence and autonomy....

"(D) Inferences between provinces are a rational part of the political reality in the federal process....

"The principle of federalism facilitates the pursuit of collective goals by cultural and linguistic minorities which form the majority within a particular province."

Later, in 2001, the Ontario Court of Appeal added

"Federalism, the division of legislative power between the Parliament of Canada and the provincial legislatures, reflects a fundamental fact of Canada’s constitutional and political structure.

"Federalism represents the constitutional definition of those aspects of our political life that unite us while preserving appropriate scope to accommodate and to enhance the heterogeneous social, cultural, and economic realities of the diverse and distinctive provincial communities that make up our nation.

"Federalism is … a legal response to the underlying political and cultural realities that existed at Confederation and continue to exist today. Federalism was the political mechanism by which diversity could be reconciled with unity."