Do You Remember Civics Class?

I don't. Never had one.

I grabbed this nifty chart from a civics class handout showing the responsibilities of the three levels of government in Canada. Every province has a variation of this chart, but basically it holds for just about anywhere in Canada.

I’m interested in this topic because I listen to people complain about how Trudeau didn’t do this, or Trudeau didn’t do that. Going into a Federal election, you expect (even though we don’t want) negative election speak. But blaming the Federal government for everything bad in your life is really misinformed. So here’s a quick refresher on who does what in Canada.

Canada has three levels of government: Federal, provincial, and municipal (city). So who does do what? This is a big topic usually taught in a civics class in high school over the course of many weeks. So we'll just give you the cliff notes version.

Healthcare in Canada

Let’s start with health care because that’s a big complaint. There stories all the time about one crisis on another in the healthcare industry in Canada. While we get “free healthcare”, our system has its problems. The federal government is always saddled with the blame for healthcare in Canada.

In fact, the healthcare system in Canada is run by each province independently. Quebec runs it differently from Ontario, which runs it different from Alberta. Each province has its own system and a separate budget. (You would know this if you moved from one province to another, and the red tape that is required!)

The federal government does provide transfer payments to the provinces to help cover costs like building hospitals, but it’s the provinces’ responsibility to distribute the money to doctors, clinics, nurses, programs, and anyone else involved in the Healthcare system within that province.

It needs to be stated, that within the rules of our Constitution, the feds have no right to tell the provinces how to spend that money. They cannot say “that money is earmarked for housing.” The provinces would give them the finger (and do).

So when you’re blaming Trudeau for the state of healthcare, he’s not the one you should be angry with for waiting 17 hours in a corridor in a hospital for stitches. It’s Doug Ford or Danielle Smith who are to blame.

Another problem is staffing at hospitals. Again, healthcare is the purview of the province. So nurses not being paid enough, or not having enough nurses? That is something the provincial governments managing and negotiate.

That goes for teachers and education too. Contracts for teachers are negotiated by the province not the federal government. The cost of teachers, staff, supplies, and buildings comes out of the taxes collected by the province for education.

Housing in Canada

Since COVID, the number one pain in everyone’s book is housing. It’s too expensive, there isn’t enough available, and not enough variety. All three of these problems ultimately fall on the municipalities.

It is the city level government that authorizes builders to build homes. They approve the plans, the number of houses, the type of houses, the layout of the houses, and the prices of the houses. The city gets the revenue from property taxes, and it’s responsible for licensing all the trades.

So why aren’t there affordable homes being built? Because it serves no one’s agenda. The more expensive a house, the more tax for the city, the more money for the bank, and the more money for the realtor or builder. It’s a win-win-win-lose for the home buyer.

Now in the past, the Federal government has become involved with massive home-building projects; namely after WWII when there was a need for starter homes for all the soldiers and newly married people wanting to have families. That’s where the baby boom came from. People just being grateful to be alive after five years of war.

But for the most part, Canada has relied on the market to determine housing.

I believe there are a couple of factors that influenced the market significantly. One was in the early 2000s with properties being bought up by foreign investors, and then COVID. Both of those events bumped up real estate prices at an accelerated rate and pushed home prices beyond what most people can pay comfortably (more on this in another post).

Getting back to government responsibility: Municipalities license developers to build neighborhoods. It is their responsibility to make sure that there is a range of housing available: affordable, high density, medium priced, townhomes, and luxury properties. Every land developer has to get the sign-off from the city on their plans.

In 2017, the federal government announced an $82 billion program over a ten year strategy to build affordable housing. But the distribution was left in the hands of the city councils to approve development plans.

It’s worth noting that Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced a really good plan for solving this housing crisis. He’s putting real money toward building affordable homes, just like what happened in the 1950s.

Infrastructure in Canada

The feds did make a mistake. There was an effort to solve the lack of skilled labor following the pandemic. Canada let in 3 million immigrants, which was 2 million more than they should have. You see, major cities like Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, where the immigrants settled, just didn’t have the infrastructure to handle that inflow of people.

Infrastructure includes water, power, fuel, roads, bridges, and housing — basically the bones of a society. Each level of government has their part to play in providing those basic needs: Cities build local services, provinces connect the cities and communities, and the feds interconnect the provinces. Cities and municipalities own as much as 60% of public infrastructure, including roads, bridges, water systems, and public transit.

Provincial governments are responsible for building hospitals, building and managing prisons, people’s civil rights, building and maintaining provincial highways, and managing natural resources. They are also responsible for social services, agriculture, tourism, justice and law enforcement, and protecting and managing waterways like rivers, lakes, etc.

The federal government is like an umbrella over our country. It is directly responsible for our economy, national defense, immigration and population control, employment insurance, making laws, foreign affairs, and international trade. The federal government is also responsible for Aboriginal lands and rights, the postal service, Supreme Court, and taking care of veterans.

So I guess, when you want to complain about something during an election, make sure you’re blaming who is actually responsible. There is no point at all in saying the feds are to blame for something that the province should have done.