Before laying blame, pick the right target

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/11/2024 (386 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When you’re angry about something, it’s helpful to know where you should direct your rage.

So keep this handy, especially if you want to find the right person to blame.

There are premiers in this country for whom governing seems to primarily involve blaming someone else for anything that goes wrong.

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe is a good example — any problem, according to Moe, is the fault of the federal government and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Plenty of other Canadians default to blaming Trudeau, too.

So, here’s a full list of the things that are actually the responsibility of the federal government:

• national public debt and property,
• the regulation of trade and commerce,
• Employment Insurance,
• direct/indirect taxation like the HST and the federal portion of income tax,
• Canada Post,
• the national census,
• national defence and policing,
• shipping and navigation,
• quarantine,
• inland fisheries and management of the sea coast,
• inter- provincial and international ferries,
• currency, banking and the incorporation of banks,
• weights and measures,
• bankruptcy,
• patents and copyrights,
• Indigenous affairs,
• citizenship,
• criminal law,
• penitentiaries (where convicts are serving a sentence of more than two years),
• marriage and divorce, and
• interprovincial projects.

Broadly based, it’s what you might expect would fall into the federal ambit: national programs and services, from passports to border control to fishing grounds, from National Parks to the collection of income tax.

Then, there are the provincial responsibilities:

• direct taxation within the provinces (PST or the provincial portion of the HST),
• management of public lands in the province,
• prisons (for criminals serving sentences of less than two years),
• hospitals and health care,
• municipalities,
• administration of criminal and civil justice,
• education,
• natural resources,
• the incorporation of companies and
• the formalization of marriage.

That division of power dates back to Canada’s Confederation in 1867. A good thumbnail way to look at it is that, by and large, federal responsibilities cover full national interests, while the provinces, within their borders, are where the rubber meets the road for the actual local delivery of services.

The two levels of government share some areas of responsibility, such as agriculture and immigration — the provinces ceded back some powers in 1951 and 1964 to allow the federal government to establish a national old age pension program.

And this is all broad strokes: the justice system and the Supreme Court of Canada regularly step in to rule on clashes between federal and provincial responsibilities, usually stepping in to rule on whether federal laws or programs are overstepping federal authority.

Problem is, some of the things the federal government gets blamed for aren’t actually federal responsibilities.

The federal government funds a portion of health care and sets the rules around areas of public and private care, but doesn’t administer how the health-care dollars it sends to the provinces are spent.

That’s a provincial responsibility and, as a result, the provinces decide where the federal cash goes — or, in fact, if it gets spent on health care at all, or gets used to finance things like provincial tax cuts.

The federal government is not actually responsible for house prices or inflation or gas prices, or for the potholes in your roads (roads are provincial and municipal issues, though the federal government often pays part of the cost for major roadworks).

And that won’t change, regardless of who the prime minister is or whichever party is running the country after the next federal election.

The federal government — especially this federal government, which has plenty of detractors — is a handy target for Canada’s problems. But if you want to apportion blame fairly, first establish who’s responsible for whatever it is that’s raised your ire.