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Create AccountEven Lucien Bouchard's glowering presence could not entirely sour the mood. In announcing a deal to overhaul the way Ottawa and the provinces work together on social programs, Prime Minister Jean Chrétien spoke proudly of "a new departure.
With the exception of Nova Scotia, every province has tabled its 1998-1999 budget.
On a day when Premier Jacques Parizeau and more than 1,000 of his closest sovereigntist friends were meeting for an occasion they deemed "historic," the man most of them consider Quebec's constitutional devil incarnate was less than 25 km away, doing his best to ignore them.
At first in the House of Commons last week, it seemed that all the major players in the Quebec referendum had decided to go back to the future and behave as though one of the most divisive campaigns in Canada's history never happened.
As Prime Minister Jean Chrétien's government tried to evoke a new era of Canadian team spirit in the House of Commons last week, it was no coincidence that the one premier who came to listen was Captain Canada himself.
Many of the concerns of modern government cut across the loose jurisdictional boundaries found in the constitution. National purposes can often only be achieved with provincial co-operation; provincial goals often require federal assistance.
Crown land is the term used to describe land owned by the federal or provincial governments. Authority for control of these public lands rests with the Crown, hence their name. Less than 11% of Canada's land is in private hands; 41% is federal crown land and 48% is provincial crown land.
After the George-Étienne Cartier-John A. MacDonald ministry in the Province of Canada was forced to resign on 29 July 1858, a Reform ministry was formed under George Brown and A.A. Dorion.
IT WASN'T QUITE what Paul MARTIN had promised. Instead of an uplifting exercise in televised democracy, his summit with the premiers lapsed into behind-closed-doors horse trading.
The Council of Twelve was established 1719 in Nova Scotia to advise the governor, deliberate on bills in the legislature's upper house and act as a civil court of appeal. Councillors were appointed by the governor and served for life. Until the 1750s the council was dominated by military officers.
Allotment of Time, rules of the House of Commons, Standing Orders 115, 116 and 117, often confused by the media with the closure rule, S.O. 57. Since 1968 most bills pass the committee stage in the standing committees and may be amended at the report stage, but S.O.
Canada's federal and provincial governments follow a budgetary process, designed to ensure control, accountability and planning in the spending of public money.
The federal government is the national government of Canada, centred in Ottawa. The term can refer narrowly to the Canadian Cabinet, or more broadly to the Cabinet and the public service.
Decentralization, in federal countries, occurs when there is a substantial sharing of power, authority, financial resources and political support among federal, provincial and local GOVERNMENTS. The less concentrated these resources are in the central government, the more decentralized the system.
Local government is the level of government below the provinces. The most important local governments are the MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS. Under the constitution, the provinces have exclusive jurisdiction over municipal affairs (see MUNICIPAL-PROVINCIAL RELATIONS).
The Autonomy Bills were the 1905 laws that created the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta out of the North-West Territories (1870–1905). Despite strong support for provincehood, frustrations were evident. The Bills’ most fiercely contested elements revolved around boundaries, the federal government’s ongoing control over public lands and resources and the educational clauses in the Bills.
Joint Commission, a mechanism used extensively by Britain and the US to settle bilateral disputes mainly of a technical nature.
Opting-Out originated as a device by which one or more provinces choose not to participate in a federal-provincial shared cost program; instead the province receives direct payment (in cash or tax room) of funds which would have been spent there.
