Seeking New Autonomies: State Rescaling, Reterritorialization and Minority Identities in Atlantic Canada

Abstract

Canada’s federal system is one of the most decentralized in the world, with its ten provinces constitutionally endowed with broad jurisdictional and taxing powers, which make them crucial political actors — either solely or in concert with the federal government — in most fields of Canadian public policy. Not only is it the dominant institutional framework for Canadian politics, federalism is also the primary influence shaping political discourse, the system of interest group representation, and individual political identities (Simeon 2009). The study of regions and regionalism in Canada, with its highly regionalized geography, economy and politics, has been similarly affected by the omnipresent reality of strong provincial governments standing in as claimants to be the legitimate political voice of regions, making federal-provincial relations the main mechanism for negotiating and resolving regional differences and grievances (Meekison et al. 2004).