Canadian Federalism and the Governance of Immigration

Abstract

The recent societal debate over ‘reasonable accommodations’ in Quebec, which culminated in the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences (Bouchard and Taylor, 2008), is perhaps most notable to observers in that it was about the larger question of migrant integration in and for Quebec. Indeed, the usual story over the sharing of the immigration file in Canada has been to present it as a case of de facto asymmetry — with two nation-building projects competing through their respective affirmations as primary host societies (Gagnon and lacovino, 2007: 92) in a situation where policy choices and collective identity are mutually reinforcing (Barker, 2010; Labelle and Rocher, 2009). In what is essentially a policy field marked by inevitable interdependence, Quebec and the federal government have managed to carve out a governance framework that has remained in place for around 20 years — and has come to represent something of a standard bearer for demonstrating the flexibility of the Canadian federation in light of its socio-political and regional diversity. Indeed, immigration is often touted as a prime example that Canada’s constitutional architecture is fundamentally flexible and can evolve to accommodate collective demands without engaging in drastic constitutive introspection and formal change.