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Administrative Supervision of Local Government: the Canadian Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Winston W. Crouch
Winston W. Crouch
Affiliation:
University of California (Los Angeles)
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Extract

Canadian local-government institutions have been influenced by those of both Great Britain and the United States, yet they retain a distinctly Canadian character. Few residents of the United States have been acquainted with Canada's internal governmental problems, because there has been relatively little information available. Canada's top political leaders have been pre-occupied with making Canada a nation, one prepared to take its place in world affairs. But what of the governments within the Dominion? The Rowell-Sirois Commission hearings and its reports in 1939 brought to the attention of many people the problems of dominion-provincial relations. More recently, the Goldenberg report in British Columbia brought attention to certain provincial-local relationships. During the 1930's, many persons in the United States became interested in the Canadian provincial boards of municipal affairs because those boards seemed to offer a means for disciplining improvident municipalities and maintaining good fiscal standards. Viewed in their full perspective, however, these boards and the departments of municipal affairs in Canadian provinces illustrate vital developments in central-local relations. Within the past forty-five years, Canadians have moved rapidly in developing the vast natural resources of the country and in building cities, towns, and villages.

Type
Foreign Government and Politics
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 43 , Issue 3 , June 1949 , pp. 509 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1949

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References

1 British Columbia: Report of Royal Commission on Local Government (1912). The Commission did recommend, however, that an inspector of municipalities be appointed to the provincial government to advise the municipalities, to assist in installing fiscal record systems, and to report to the province on municipal finances; and this recommendation was put into effect in 1914.

2 Quebec formed one in 1918. The Canadian Union of Municipalities sponsored the journal, the Municipal Review of Canada, published in Quebec province. The Western Municipal Review has always been a private publication, but has been designated the official publication for unions of municipalities and associations of local officers in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia.

3 Perrie, John [duputy minister of municipal affairs of Alberta], “Departments of Municipal Affairs Prove Themselves”, The Municipal World, Oct., 1919, pp. 151–155Google Scholar.

4 The bonus problem was not exclusive to Quebec. Ontario and other provinces had been troubled with it for many years. Alberta forbade its local governments to give bonuses.

5 Bouchard, T. D., in Proceedings of the Annual Convention, Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities, 1933Google Scholar. M. Bouchard was a local officer and member of the Quebec legislature for many years, secretary of the Quebec Union of Municipalities, and president of the Union of Canadian Municipalities in 1919.

6 11 Geo. V, ch. 140 (1921). Fifteen commissioners were apportioned: Montreal, 8; Westmount, 1; Outremont, 1; Verdun, 1; Lachine, 1; 2 between two groups of towns.

7 Alberta: Report of the Alberta Taxation Inquiry Board on Provincial and Municipal Taxation (1935).

Saskatchewan: Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Provincial and Municipal Taxation (1936).

8 Manitoba adopted a plan in 1947 to integrate assessment administration under a provincial municipal assessor subordinate to the municipal commission. A municipal assessment and equalization board was to hear appeals. Local assessors cease to function except in those municipalities that the commissioner may exempt.

9 Western Municipal News, Apr., 1939, p. 93Google Scholar.

10 Mosely, W. E., “Preventing Municipal Default”, Public Affairs, June, 1939, pp. 195–198Google Scholar. Union of Nova Scotia Municipalities, Proceedings (1940), p. 24Google Scholar. A committee of the Canadian Bar Association condemned Alberta's action as an attack upon freedom of municipal institutions.

11 Fletcher, B. A., “A Century of Educational Organization, 1838–1939”, Public Affairs, Aug., 1938, pp. 18–22Google Scholar.

12 Manitoba Statutes, 1944, chap. 59.

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