Abstract
Canada’s cities operate within restrictive legislative frameworks, yet incremental changes have resulted in some large Canadian cities accepting more policy responsibility. In this article, we ask if some big cities have a greater degree of local autonomy than others? We use existing Canadian and international literature to build a made-for-Canada index to quantitatively measure and compare levels of local autonomy by measuring vertical relations between 10 large cities and their respective provinces across three dimensions: legal-administrative autonomy, fiscal autonomy, and political autonomy. Overall, we find low levels of local autonomy, but differences along various dimensions of autonomy, notably political. Few countries in the world have senior levels of government that have been so resistant to loosen restraint and regulation as has been in the case in Canada; our results from this unique and important case shed new light on the reactions of subnational government to evolving demands for increased decentralization and local autonomy.
Like many other countries, the majority of Canada’s population lives in and around its largest cities, 1 with every indication that the population within these areas will increase (Broadbent 2009; Gordon and Shirokoff 2014; Jacobs and Rowe 2000). Yet unlike most other countries, Canada’s largest cities operate within comparatively restrictive legislative frameworks (Brunet-Jailly and Martin 2010; Garcea and LeSage 2005; Lidstone 2004; Magnussen 2005a; Sancton 1993; Siegel 1997). Incremental changes have resulted in Canadian cities taking on more policy responsibility, with some cities venturing into social policy, and many engaging as full partners with provincial governments on certain issues (Bradford and Bramwell 2014; Dewing, Young, and Tolley 2006; Fowler and Siegel 2001; Good 2009; Graham, Phillips, and Maslove 1998; Horak and Young 2012; Leo 2006; Leo and August 2009). In some instances, city charters have been introduced with the intention of providing large cities with more power and policy responsibility (Broadbent 2009; Levi and Valverde 2006; Sancton 2008). There has been great attention paid to these and other reforms, yet we do not have a true sense of the local autonomy of large urban cities in Canada today, nor an ability to measure the effect of future changes to government structures of those cities.
The discussion surrounding the autonomy of the largest urban centers in Canada is of interest to scholars of urban politics and federalism both in and outside of Canada. The debate over the function, role, and place of city governments in Canada has gained momentum in recent years (Broadbent 2009; Good 2009; Sancton 2008). Yet few countries in the world have senior levels of government that have been so reluctant to loosen restraints and regulations from local governments, which have no formal protection under the Canadian constitution. For us to fully grasp the evolving place of big cities in intergovernmental networks around the world, we need to keep a close eye on Canada, a comparative laggard when it comes to advances in local autonomy. Furthermore, Canada is the world’s second largest federation; comparing the local autonomy of large cities (the constitutional responsibility of provincial governments) allows for an important consideration of how federalism affects local autonomy.
For these reasons, this article seeks to quantitatively measure and compare the level of local autonomy of big cities across Canada as of 2014. Unlike the United States and countries throughout Western Europe, there is no such index to measure local autonomy within Canada. However, this is not to say that there have not been efforts to gauge local autonomy in Canada. In fact, several authors have delved into the subject over the years (Garcea 2014; Garcea and LeSage 2005; Magnussen 2005b; McAllister 2004; Sancton and Young 2009; Tindal and Tindal 2000). Such research is largely qualitative and holds considerable merit; we hope to complement this literature by introducing standardized quantitative measures for present and future studies of local autonomy in the largest cities in Canada.
Outside of Canada, there are a host of studies that have quantitatively examined local autonomy. However, indices created for the purpose of measuring local autonomy in the United States (Hamilton, Miller, and Paytas 2004; Stephens 1974; Stephens and Wikstrom 2006; Wolman et al. 2010) and Europe (Goldsmith and Page 2010; Gurr and King 1987; Page 1991; Sellers and Lidström 2007; Vetter 2007) pose analytical challenges for the study of Canadian cities. We cannot simply “add Canada and stir” to American or European efforts to measure local autonomy, as they are inherently best suited to those respective institutional contexts. Measures of local autonomy in the United States, for example, include a number of factors, such as home rule, that are simply not applicable in the Canadian context. Cross-national measures that have been developed for mostly unitary European countries at times include Canada, but these are also problematic in that they do not adequately consider federalism. An index that accurately compares the local autonomy of cities in a comparative and international context would need to consider not just elements that all cities have in common (such as full-time employees) but also country-specific factors (such as home rule in the United States or the prefectoral system in some European countries). This is an ambitious but thoroughly worthwhile project, as it would not only put into perspective the autonomy of a given city (Toronto or Copenhagen), but it would also allow for an important consideration of how countries are responding to the changing needs of their large cities.
An internationally comparative index is a necessary project, but it is not our aim in this article, which seeks to compare the autonomy of large Canadian cities within the Canadian federation. The results of our index, and the results of future studies that employ the index to assess the impact of any legislative changes, will be of great use to Canadian and international scholars, as noted above. We, therefore, have built an index, the first of its kind, that will allow us to create an accurate baseline measure of local autonomy of the largest city in each of the 10 Canadian provinces. 2 We have chosen to focus on the largest city in each province so we can establish a baseline measure of local autonomy in 2014, which will allow us to track and measure any future changes brought about by the urban reform movement. We do this by combining existing Canadian literature on local autonomy with international indices to create a made-for-Canada index. This index is not a radical departure from existing indices, but it is better suited to understanding the local autonomy of big cities in the Canadian case. We hope that the index will be used in future studies to further probe the broader local government systems in each Canadian province.
Although we find remarkably similar overall levels of autonomy, our conclusions nevertheless demonstrate that we should acknowledge the different legal and regulatory environments in which large Canadian cities operate. While we find that not all big Canadian cities have high levels of local autonomy, our data show that some are, indeed, more autonomous than others. In detailing the vertical relationship between Canadian cities and their respective provincial governments, this article demonstrates that local autonomy further varies across big cities in Canada when we separate our autonomy measure into its three component categories: financial, political, and legal-administrative. We argue that the overall similar level of autonomy results from the fact that all 10 cities scored almost exactly the same (low) score in terms of financial autonomy. Cities with more legal-administrative powers are unable to fully use them unless they also have accompanying financial autonomy, which is not the case in any of the 10 big cities under examination below. Yet there is still some variation in terms of legal-administrative and political autonomy. Simply put, we cannot treat Canadian cities in a similar fashion when conducting comparative research (see Sellers and Lidström 2007).
In light of international findings of local autonomy, Canada is clearly the laggard in devolving responsibility and autonomy to the local level. Pressures to increase municipal autonomy in Canada are mounting, and as more Canadians are calling big cities their home, we should expect this situation of such tight provincial controls to change. Non-Canadian audiences will find that Canada is an important case in monitoring trends toward local autonomy around the world, and this index will be a valuable tool in doing so.
Considering Local Autonomy 3
In general, local autonomy refers to the relationship between a city and other orders of government (and sometimes other sectors of society as well, such as local economic or social groups). Yet scholars of local governance have correctly observed that there is no specific and agreed-upon definition of local autonomy (Goldsmith and Page 1987; Vetter 2007; Wolman 2008; Wolman et al. 2010). This has led to theoretical confusion, imprecision, and disagreements in studies of local autonomy throughout Europe and the United States. We seek to add clarity to the debate and hope that this will be the beginning of a lively and productive discussion of local autonomy and the place of big cities in the Canadian intergovernmental structure.
In their study of the changing nature of cities in the United States and Great Britain, Gurr and King (1987, p. 46) argue that local autonomy is a measure of how “patterns of constraint” limit a city’s ability to govern itself. There are two sources of constraint; the first is from local economic and social groups, and the second comes from the central state. In other words, a city is autonomous if it is not substantially constrained by its relationship with local economic and social groups and/or the central state. Page (1991) 4 disagreed with Gurr and King’s definition, writing that local autonomy is a measure of the opportunities for local political elites to shape public services. Opportunities to shape public services are determined by the relationship between the city and the central government along two dimensions: legal and political. Legal autonomy concerns the formal powers of local governments whereas political autonomy is the extent to which local governments can access and influence the decision-making process at the national level. Responding directly to Page’s work, Vetter (2007, p. 99) defined local autonomy as, “the range of functions the local level performs within a country and the freedom local authorities have in making decisions about how to deliver their services—the scope of their discretion.”
Using the term decentralization instead of local autonomy, Sellers and Lidström (2007) similarly measured the relationship between the local and senior levels of government. Their conceptualization of this relationship encompasses local capacities and the supervision of local actions. Finally, Wolman et al. (2010, p. 70) offered a complex and multifaceted definition of local autonomy, noting that the lack of precision has caused analytical confusion:
local autonomy is a system of local government in which local government units have an important role to play in the economy and the intergovernmental system, have discretion in determining what they will do without undue constraint from high levels of government, and have the means or capacity to do so.
Canadian scholars have theorized about local autonomy as well. In their article examining local capacity of rural municipalities, Jacob et al. (2008) argued that autonomy is, in fact, a component of a larger concept: capacity. Municipalities might be autonomous in a legal or fiscal sense, but the authors (2008, p. 412) argued that autonomy is meaningless without capacity, which is defined as “the ability of an individual or group to organize assets and resources to achieve objectives that are valued at the community level.” Capacity is, thus, a complex concept, “in which autonomy is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition” (Jacob et al. 2008, p. 408). The other conditions necessary for a high degree of capacity are citizen participation and support, expertise, and access to funds (Jacob et al. 2008).
While there is no consensus on its formal definition, local autonomy is clearly multifaceted. A common element in these definitions is the significance of the constraints on a local government. Therefore, we define local autonomy in Canada as the ability to develop and implement policies at the local level, free from provincial institutional constraints. Our index flows from this intentionally minimalist definition, but we elaborate on overall measurement and component parts below.
Measuring Local Autonomy 5
These different definitions of local autonomy have, unsurprisingly, led to the development of different methods of measurement, which are outlined below. A common aspect, however, is that nearly all of these authors include measures that capture both de jure and de facto autonomy. Our examination does as well, as we, like most authors who have examined autonomy in a systematic way, view them as closely related conceptualizations.
The local autonomy measure proposed by Gurr and King (1987) considers two dimensions of autonomy: relations with local social and economic forces as well as relations with the central government. Local autonomy from economic and social groups can be limited by a total of five conditions. In their final analysis, they found that there is often a trade-off between the two dimensions of autonomy; where autonomy from local and economic sources is high, autonomy from the central government is low. They (1987, p. 184) concluded that American cities are “considerably more autonomous” than British cities.
Page’s (1991) measure of autonomy is based upon legal and political relationships between local governments and the central state. For the former, Page considers six financial and legal factors. 6 There is also a political dimension to Page’s study of local autonomy, which is defined as to the extent to which local governments can shape public services by accessing the national-level policy-making process. Political access can be either direct or indirect. Page concludes that cities with strong political autonomy tend to have weak legal autonomy, and vice versa. This is a curious finding; indeed, one might expect that if cities had strong access to national policy making that they would use this influence to gain greater legal localism. 7
Vetter (2007) directly criticized Page on these contradicting findings, and argued the political and legal dimensions that he highlights are not of equal importance. She concluded that the political influence municipalities are able to exercise on the national level is limited. She (2007, p. 99), therefore, removed this dimension from her study, concentrating exclusively on the legal dimension of local autonomy, or “legal localism,” which is divided into functions and discretion. Breaking with past traditions of qualitatively measuring local autonomy, Sellers and Lidström (2007) created a quantitative measure of the relationship between the local and state governments in Europe. They included 12 indicators into their index of autonomy, which measure both local government capacities and supervision of local government.
Like Sellers and Lidström, Wolman et al. (2010) believed there are different dimensions to local autonomy. For Wolman et al., these dimensions are local government importance, local government capacity, and local government discretion. 8 Their index contained 20 indicators (divided along the three dimensions noted above), making it the most complex of the indices reviewed here.
Jacob et al. (2008) offered a Canadian effort to compare local autonomy in small rural municipalities. The authors acknowledged that their work is exploratory due to the undertheorized nature of autonomy throughout Canada, especially in small municipalities. They (2008, p. 409) chose to specifically study local autonomy in small municipalities because “the administrative context of rural governments is significantly different from that of their urban and suburban counterparts.” An important difference between small and large municipalities is, for the authors, capacity; large urban centers have a larger pool of experienced and educated people upon whom to draw. In smaller municipalities, resources are limited, and autonomy can only be fully exercised when there is sufficient “capacity” at the local level. To operationalize capacity in small municipalities, the authors consider the levels of education; this is the only study reviewed to include this as a factor. We do not, however, include education or capacity as an indicator in our index. As Jacobs et al. themselves note, the lack of qualified people in smaller rural municipalities is a challenge that large urban cities do not face.
Although not a standardized measure of local autonomy in Canada, Sancton and Young (2009) have convincingly argued that true local autonomy requires a legitimate, democratically elected, and accountable local government. Young (2009, p. 498) wrote in the book’s conclusion, “if municipal governments are about collective choices that represent the will of the community about its future direction, then a solid democratic foundation for these decisions is essential.” Their understanding of local autonomy, thus, includes measures of political accountability, including contribution and spending limits in local elections.
In their important study of municipalities in Canada, Garcea and LeSage (2005) offered a comprehensive analysis of local reform initiatives. They (2005, p. 1) wrote, “notwithstanding the fact some reform initiatives have been undertaken in all provinces and territories, considerable differences exist between them in their premise and scope.” Their edited book is an analysis of reforms in all Canadian provinces and territories and focuses on what the authors refer to as the 5Ps of reform: the purposes, pillars, products, processes, and politics (see Garcea and LeSage 2005). The results of the reforms implemented across the country were, however, unclear to the editors (2005, p. 16): “it is difficult to conclude whether municipal governance is improved today over what it had been 10–15 years ago.” Our index is not a measure of the quality of local governance per se, but in providing a replicable and quantifiable measure, it will allow for future comparisons regarding the impact these reforms have had on the local autonomy across Canada.
Measuring Local Autonomy in Canada
Given the popularity of measuring local autonomy in international literature, it is curious that there is no such effort to quantitatively measure and compare local autonomy within Canada. Efforts that have been undertaken to include Canada in comparative studies of local autonomy have, for reasons highlighted below, misrepresented the reality of local autonomy in Canada. One explanation for the lack of Canadian studies of local autonomy could be that provincial controls over municipal governments are so strong that autonomy is presumed to be severely limited across the country. Yet, with the country becoming increasingly urbanized and provincial legislation slowly recognizing the important place of cities in Canadian governance, we believe that now is a propitious time to look more closely at local autonomy. Existing qualitative studies of municipal reform and local autonomy in Canada are an important foundation to this endeavor. The advantage of a quantitative index of local autonomy in Canada is that it can be replicated as a means of understanding the effects of future legislative changes by providing an important baseline of autonomy against which future reforms can be tested.
Compared with American and European municipalities, we do know that Canadian municipalities are highly constrained by provincial controls. For example, the American index by Wolman et al. (2010) included “home rule” as a factor, which is an important difference between autonomy in Canadian and American cities. As McAllister (2004, p. 88) explained,
The American federal constitution does not mention local governments . . . a number of American states, however, have entrenched the rights and powers of local governments in their constitutions. As a result, local governments are somewhat less subject to the whims of unfriendly legislatures.
This factor is simply not applicable in the Canadian context where cities have no constitutional status and remain “creatures of the provinces.” It is, therefore, inappropriate to use an American index in the Canadian context when it includes factors, including home rule, that do not relate to Canada’s institutional environment.
Similarly, European indices cannot be applied to the Canadian environment. Like Wolman et al. (2010), Sellers and Lidström (2007) included factors that are not applicable to the Canadian context. For example, they consider whether there is a prefect or other form of local supervisory official. This prefect position, which is appointed by the central government with the explicit role of overseeing local affairs, is not applicable in the Canadian context. Another weakness of the approach taken by Sellers and Lidström (2007) and Page (1991) was their cursory treatment of federalism. They include non-European countries in their index, including federations such as the United States, Australia, and Canada. For these federal countries, Sellers and Lidström average the results of each federal unit to create an overall result regarding autonomy; in other words, they classify all of Canada in the same way. We contend that this is a misrepresentation of local autonomy in Canada, as cities fall under provincial jurisdiction. The Canadian federal context is somewhat unique in that it is highly decentralized (Banting 2005), but also because provinces in Canada tend to guard their powers, including over local governments, jealously (Rice and Prince 2013). Indeed, there are significant differences on matters of provincial jurisdiction in Canada (Banting 1987; Béland and Daigneault 2015; Boychuk 1998; Harrison 2006; Noël 2010), and we argue that it is not safe to presume uniformity in terms of local–provincial relations in the Canadian decentralized federation.
At least in theory, the federal government is not able to interfere in matters concerning municipalities (Sancton 1993). The federal government does, of course, engage directly with cities, but this is often done on an ad hoc basis (Young and McCarthy 2009). Structured relationships between the federal and municipal governments have been attempted in the past but were short-lived (Spicer 2010; 2011). Municipalities lobby and engage the federal government, mostly through the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM), but as the FCM represents all municipalities at the national level, we conclude that there is no difference between how well different cities are represented at the federal level (Chenier 2009; Stevenson and Gilbert 2005). Measuring the relationship between local governments and the central government is, thus, unlikely to uncover much difference; the index, thus, solely addresses the municipal–provincial relationship.
For these reasons, a comparison of the local autonomy of Canadian cities cannot accurately be measured by the existing indices. They are, however, important roadmaps for the study of local autonomy in Canada. Our index is not, therefore, a radical departure from existing indices of local autonomy, but rather adapts and blends them with Canadian studies to make an appropriate tool for measuring local autonomy in Canada. The factors used to measure local autonomy by the authors that were reviewed above can be sorted into the three categories identified by Sellers and Lidström: legal-administrative, fiscal, and political. Some authors further divide these factors into constraints and capacities. In reviewing the indices, it is clear that constraints and capacities are two sides of the same coin as opposed to two analytically separate categories. Our index, thus, contains these three dimensions, each of which contains four indicators.
Legal-Administrative 9
In keeping with previous measures, we use proxies to measure and compare specific municipal policy responsibilities. Like Vetter (2007), Sellers and Lidström (2007), and Wolman et al. (2010), we do not compare the policy areas for which local governments are responsible; rather, we compare municipal full-time employment in the city in question in relation to the total full-time public-sector employment in the province as a proxy. More employment in relation to provincial totals is considered to increase local autonomy, as it likely represents an increase in functional capacity.
City charter protection on local autonomy replaces indicators such as “Constitutional protections on Local Autonomy” from Sellers and Lidström and “home rule” in Wolman et al. (2010). We recognize that there is a spectrum of autonomy that can be granted by city charters. 10 We do not, however, consider the content of the charter itself; rather, we consider the presence or absence of a charter, with the assumption that a charter indicates recognition from the province that the city under question is in some way different from other cities in the same province—an assumption made quite readily by others (Broadbent 2002, 2009). We consider a city with a charter more autonomous than one without.
Our third indicator is drawn from Sancton and Young’s (2009) comprehensive study of municipal governance in Canada—Foundations of Governance. A municipality is considered autonomous if it has protections from some provincial initiatives or must be consulted before the province can act within its policy realm. 11 In British Columbia, for example, the community charter stipulates that the provincial government must consult with municipalities on matters of mutual interest, including proposed changes to municipal legislation (Government of BC 2003). Finally, we include what we have called “supralocal control of government form” as an indicator of provincial authority over council size. Municipalities that have standards set for them by the province regarding the size and form of their councils are considered less autonomous.
Fiscal
A second dimension determines fiscal autonomy for each of our case cities. The first indicator is total local government expenditure for the city in question as a percentage of total public provincial expenditure. Higher municipal expenditure in relation to provincial expenditure is considered an indicator of increased autonomy. 12 We recognize that there will be a certain degree of interdependence between this indicator and the indicator in the legal-administrative dimension related to full-time employees; a significant source of expenditure is salaries for municipal employees. We do, however, believe both of these indicators are important to include in the index based on their consistent presence in other international indices. A second indicator considers tax revenues. Much like our indicator for expenditures, we consider higher local tax revenues in relation to provincial tax revenues as an indicator of increased autonomy. Third, we have included conditional grants; we consider lower levels of conditional grants from the province as creating less financial dependence and, thus, more autonomy for municipalities. Finally, we include hierarchical borrowing conditions. We have created this indicator through five measures (see Table 1). 13 While some of these restrictions provide municipalities with access to lower borrowing rates, we consider fewer restrictions placed upon borrowing as an indicator of greater fiscal autonomy.
Index Indicators.
Political
The final dimension measures the extent to which local governments have political autonomy. The first indicator included in this dimension is the strength of the representation of local interests at the provincial level. This indicator is drawn from Sellers and Lidström (2007) and Page (1991). To measure this, we consider the relative strength of the association (or associations, in some cases) representing municipal interests at the provincial level. 14 We next consider provincially imposed limits on local campaigning, namely, spending and contribution limits on mayoral campaigns. Consistent with past literature, we consider fewer provincial restrictions upon local electioneering an indication of increased political autonomy (Sancton and Young 2009).
Our final measure is adapted from Page (1991) and Goldsmith and Page (2010). This measure concerns political networks and linkages between local and senior levels of government. Past research has found that political relationships and politics in general can create autonomy and opportunity for local governments (Goldsmith and Page 2010; Hamilton, Miller, and Paytas 2004). To capture political relationships, we thus consider the extent to which provincial government officials have previously served on the local council in question and vice versa. To operationalize this indicator, we consider the ratio of members with municipal experience to the number of provincial representatives (or vice versa). For example, if seven out of 17 provincial representatives have municipal experience and another province has seven out of 30 representatives with provincial experience, the city in the first province will be judged to have increased autonomy. This is because in the former case, the seven will speak with a louder voice when they are only in a group of 17, and will control a greater percentage of the votes (possibly even the majority), when it comes to issues affecting the city government.
Table 1 presents information on each of our measures. The data that have been entered into this index come mainly from primary sources, including many personal exchanges with provincial and municipal officials.
The information is analyzed on a scale whereby 1 represents more autonomy and 0 represents less autonomy. Where there are protections on local autonomy, therefore, the number allocated to the indicator will be close to 1; where there are no such protections, the number will approximate 0. Given their increased importance in the provincial–municipal relationships, legal-administrative and financial dimensions are weighted at 40%, while political indicators are weighted at 20%. This is not to say that political dimensions are unimportant. We have seen how authors, such as Sancton and Young (2009), place importance on the strength of local democracy. Given the place of Canadian local governments in relation to provincial governments in Canada, however, we felt it necessary to add weights that would accurately reflect the nature of this relationship, namely, the ability of communities to direct the governance and finances of their communities from provincial control and oversight. This is also in keeping with findings from Vetter (2007) and Page (1991) that the political dimension of autonomy is not considered as meaningful as legal and/or financial autonomy.
Results
The full results from our index are presented below, in Table 2, including the totals for each dimension and the overall score for each city. We sought out information from a variety of sources (as we detail above) for each variable. We obtained the subtotals for each dimension by averaging the results for each indicator. We then use a weighted average of the three dimensions to get an overall score for each city.
Category Totals.
Note. For clarity, we have used the following short forms for the following city names in Table 2: “Van” = Vancouver, “Cal” = Calgary, “Sask” = Saskatoon, “Wpg” = Winnipeg, “Tor” = Toronto, “Mtl” = Montréal, “Hal” = Halifax, and “Char” = Charlottetown. This was done to conserve space in the table. Many of the same abbreviations are used below in Table 3 as well.
A weighted average is provided for each dimension in Table 2, applying the 40–40–20 formula previously discussed. For convenience, we also present our findings on a scale ranging from low–low to high–high to place each city in defined space while providing the reader with an approximate understanding of where each city ranks in terms of legal-administrative, fiscal, and political autonomy. Each category covers roughly equal distance on our 0 to 1 scale: low–low 0–0.19, low–high 0.20–0.36, medium–low 0.37–0.52, medium–high 0.53–0.68, high–low 0.69–0.84, and high–high 0.85–1.00.
From Table 3, we can see there is some variation in the totals for each city, but that most of the cities we study reside in the low end of the scale. We should note that the bar for full autonomy is set high considering the measures we have included. Because provincial measures have been included as the benchmark for certain indicators (e.g., local employment and expenditure measures), a fully autonomous city would have to have 100% the employment in the province and 100% the provincial expenditures. It would be difficult, if not impossible, for a city to achieve such a status. However, we felt this scale of 0–1 is best to provide comparative context, especially considering one of our tasks is comparing provincial approaches to local autonomy.
Category Results.
Note. “Char” = Charlottetown.
Discussion
Overall, our index shows that there is no city in Canada that has achieved a significant amount of autonomy from its provincial government. Fiscal autonomy, legal-administrative autonomy, and political autonomy are all at the low end of the scale. In terms of fiscal autonomy, we have not seen provincial governments express much interest in loosening regulations in terms of reporting, spending, or borrowing. In fact, most provinces still maintain very tight restrictions on local borrowing (Ambroski 2010), which would partially explain the remarkable consistency we find in this category, one of the main takeaways of this study. This can largely be attributed to the fear of provincial governments that they would ultimately be responsible for municipal insolvency. This consistency is also indicative of how most fiscal measures for local government are closely related. Much of this has to do with the restrictions placed upon local administrations by provincial governments. For example, as municipal governments cannot run deficits, their revenue and expenditures are consistent, which limits their ability to hire staff and employees. In the future, if cities are given greater financial autonomy, it will be important to track whether this pattern changes.
Our results do not show a meaningful effect from city charters. Municipal leaders and the general public often receive charters with much fanfare and excitement (see Broadbent 2008, 2005; Jacobs and Rowe 2000). Our results demonstrate that the high hopes many had for these types of arrangements to increase other dimensions of autonomy, notably financial, have gone unrealized. This is perhaps due to the limited financial framework within which cities operate; charter cities might have increased legal-administrative or political powers, but without accompanying fiscal autonomy, they are unable to fully exercise their new powers. Despite this, the debate about city charters in Canada has continued and, indeed, become more amplified. In fact, some provinces such as Alberta have had prolonged conversations with large cities about implementing city charters, although to date, these discussions have not resulted in the creation of charters in the province. These conversations regarding autonomy have contributed to increased public interest in the power of municipal politicians in relation to provincial counterparts. Our finding here should surely help inform this ongoing city charter debate.
Some international indices, such as Page (1991), have found a contradiction between political and legal dimensions of autonomy; where political autonomy was high, legal autonomy was low, and vice versa. We do not find a similar contradiction across the dimensions in Canada. This is likely due to the importance of the fiscal dimension. While cities are aspiring to become full players in the Canadian intergovernmental system and are in some cases getting additional powers to that end, provinces continue to have the upper hand, with a firm grip at that, with their significant limits on financial autonomy. The other two dimensions are, of course, very important, and they allow cities to use various tools to innovate with limited powers. Changes to all three dimensions will be important to monitor, but future studies of local autonomy should pay particular attention to changes to fiscal autonomy.
Delving deeper, we do see some variation along the three dimensions. It is unsurprising to see Vancouver has the most autonomy of all the 10 cases; this finding confirms much of the qualitative literature on local autonomy. Vancouver is the only city that scores relatively high on both political and legal-administrative autonomy. British Columbia has historically intervened in municipal affairs with “gentle imposition” (Smith and Stewart 2009); the province’s relationship with its biggest municipality is even more permissive, and has been since the 1950s. It is unclear whether this increased autonomy results from the Vancouver charter or from British Columbia’s overall attitude toward municipalities; a full investigation of this question is beyond the scope of this study, but future scholars may wish to compare the autonomy of British Columbian cities so as to better untangle these different potential determinants of autonomy.
While many of the big cities have similar levels of autonomy, our lowest scoring city is Saskatoon, which has comparably low political and legal-administrative levels of autonomy. The city also has low levels of political autonomy relative to its counterparts. This low comparative score again confirms existing research, which has concluded, “in the realm of municipal-governance reform, Saskatchewan has been, and continues to be, a model of timidity and stasis” (Garcea and Gilchrist 2009, p. 377).
The most recent changes to municipal–provincial relations in Canada confirm Sancton and Young’s (2009) conclusion that the general direction of reforms has been toward autonomy. Montréal is a clear example in this. Elected mayor in 2013, Denis Coderre has announced a number of autonomy-increasing changes and is lobbying the province for even more. For example, corporate representation of municipalities in Québec has historically been weak because it has been divided into two organizations: the Québec Federation of Municipalities (FQM), made up of small municipalities; and the Union of Québec Municipalities (UMQ), a small organization made up of most large municipalities. Coderre, along with Québec City Mayor Régis Lebaume, announced in 2014 that both cities will become associate members of the FQM, a first in the organization’s 70-year history. With this addition to the FQM, Québec municipalities will now be better able to lobby the provincial government and speak with one solid voice.
Conclusion
We set out with the goal of creating an easily replicable mechanism to assess the autonomy of 10 large cities in Canada. To aid in this task, we defined local autonomy as the ability to develop and implement policies at the local level, free from provincial institutional constraints. Our index flowed directly from this definition, which is very similar to international indices. Our results show that there are some differences in the capacity of local governments to act without provincial constraints in Canada. With that said, we do not see any city in Canada that reaches commonly held definitions of local autonomy, including the guiding definition we use in this article; the autonomy of all 10 cities is relatively similar and on the low end of the spectrum. To keen observers of local government, it should not come as much of a surprise that Canada’s big cities are still very much “creatures of the provinces.” Yet, we do see variation in local autonomy across the country, especially when we look at the three component parts of the index. While this variation is small, it does indicate that changes in municipal–provincial relations have not been uniformly experienced.
Canada has become increasingly urbanized through its history, and yet its system of urban governance has not greatly changed since Confederation in 1867. Provincial controls on local governments in Canada are among the strongest in the world. It is not inevitable that this will change, but it is, indeed, likely. Big city mayors are powerfully arguing for reforms to the structures of urban governance, and at various points in Canadian history, there has been an appetite, or at least openness, to this agenda at the provincial and federal levels. How much power should cities have? Should large cities have more power than small- or medium-sized municipalities? If cities had more power, what would they do with it? To better understand these questions, we have to first understand where the biggest cities in the country stand in relation to provincial governments and, of course, to each other. This makes the collection of baseline local autonomy scores even more important as it will allow scholars and practitioners to monitor and evaluate the results of future reforms. When others have revisited their indices years later (see Stephens and Wikstrom 2006), they have found that significant state centralization had occurred. With Canada on the precipice of the local autonomy debate, it will be interesting to see which direction the country heads. Our index will provide a helpful method of measurement over time.
Within this context, we believe that measuring the autonomy of these 10 big cities is an important contribution to the study of intergovernmental relations in Canada, because it highlights the extent to which cities can vary in their abilities to act and initiate policies and programs, as they do with respect to legal-administrative and political autonomy. It also highlights the extensive similarity, surprising in a decentralized federation such as Canada, with respect to the financial side of autonomy. A nuanced appreciation of how cities differ in their provincial relationships, their abilities to take initiative, and fund their own projects results in a more complete understanding of how Canadians living in large urban centers are governed. We have used the limited space we have in this article to produce a workable index for future research and to use it to establish a baseline measure of the autonomy of the largest city in each province; a fruitful next step is to not only explain the variation but also strive to understand the tangible affect of increased local autonomy and its impact on the policy process.
Footnotes
Appendix
Acknowledgements
The authors wanted to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments. They would also like to thank Andrew Sancton, Laurence Bherer, Jack Lucas and Andre Perrella.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.