Provincial and Municipal Restructuring in Canada: Assessing Expectations and Outcomes

Provincial-municipal restructuring in Canada has received considerable attention during the 1990s from both provincial and municipal levels of government. The fiscal download by the Federal government to the provinces and the municipalities, along with the growing acceptance of a new public management philosophy, have been the two common variables encouraging provincial-municipal reforms over the last decade. With Federal initiatives directed towards shifting a greater portion of the financial burden of governance and service delivery on to the Provinces, as evident with reductions in federal grants and alterations to Federal-provincial cost sharing rules, the provinces have themselves been actively involved with the reorganisation of their own financial and political structures. While these fiscal reforms were in part attributed to the economic pressures of the 1990s, they were also attributed to a new approach in public management at all levels of government that increasingly promoted the entrepreneurial spirit of the private sector in the public realm.