POLI 319 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Parliamentary Sovereignty, Parliamentary System, The Motto
13 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Tuesday, January 30, 2018 – topic 4 FEDERALISM
Focus: why is it that institutional arrangements have continued to be a source of policy changes?
Why are they an important issue in studying Canadian politics?
- Constitutional chance, the meaning of confederation, the first phase of constitutional
change that took into account indigenous issues: related to public policy in the issue of
sharing
- Intergovernmental relations: Savois’s piece on the gov’t
There is a constitutional level of analysis, a governmental, and a practical = they all work
together
Reading discussed: Ladner, Fishing for a new constitutional order
Summary and main points: federalism and how Canadian politics involves federalism and
debates over what level of gov’t is responsible for what. The point of the article is the addition of
an aboriginal level of gov’t between fed and prov by the author.
- Issue over fishing and who has priority over what
- The Mic Mac claim they have jurisdiction of the fish, the question asks who really has
jurisdiction over the salmon?
- The non-aboriginal fishermen didn’t think they were fishing illegally
- Magna Carta: the 47th provision established a public right to fish, saying fisheries could
not be exclusive (is public)
- Is the salmon a provincial or federal problem?
o The provinces took the federal gov’t to court with their section 92 rights.
Provincial gov’t believed they had rights over their land and area so they could
claim property over the caught fish. The federal gov’t had rights over the
management of the fish, big mess. Courts decided in favour of the providences,
federal gov’t can only regulate
- Mic mac responsibility: their rights were written in law, and they felt these were being
violated. Section 35, confusing if it’s an aboriginal right to fish or a treaty right. Some
authors think that aboriginals can’t be excluded
- Tied it into court cases: Marshall 1999 in favour of aboriginals, Vanderpee 1996 against
the aboriginal, 3rd case says the Canadian gov’t can intervene and change treaties if
justified – this is difficult because what is the meaning of justified? Very vague.
o The problem is that the cases are all different and there is no uniform manner to
take care of the fishing issue with the aboriginals
o Mic mac constitution looks at the environment in relation to their ancestors, have
an order they want to upkeep – no explicit text on their rights but a principle of
taking only what you need and the relationship between nature and human
o The Mic Mac made allies with the French but not the English because the English
tried to kill them when they settled: the English didn’t allow the aboriginals to
help out with the fisheries
The point is that salmon fishing is still in question, nobody is in agreement
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