A Seat at the Table: Municipalities and Intergovernmental Relations in Canada

Municipalities are involved in an increasing number of policy areas, but they remain largely absent from Canada’s system of intergovernmental relations. Municipal representatives do not attend First Ministers’ meetings. They are largely excluded from intergovernmental councils or committees focused on specific policy areas. And they do not participate in the negotiation of most intergovernmental agreements. This paper explores how Canada’s intergovernmental infrastructure could be reformed to include municipalities. It does so through an analysis of how other countries have made space for municipalities in their intergovernmental processes. The paper looks at models for integrating municipalities, including committees in the executive branch, intergovernmental councils, constitutional provisions, and more. After drawing five lessons from international experience, the paper lays out goals for intergovernmental relations reform in Canada: municipal inclusion in federal and provincial-territorial policymaking; collaboration on shared priorities; and improved urban, rural, and regional policy. It concludes with four approaches to achieving these goals: 1. Ensure municipalities have the capacity, voice, and structures to participate effectively in intergovernmental relations. This can be achieved through investment in staff at the municipal level; investment in municipal associations; increased regional coordination and, ideally, new regional governance structures; and further horizontal coordination across the province among municipalities and municipal associations. 2. Increase municipal involvement in provincial policymaking. Potential models include a formal, institutionalized council for provincial-municipal relations, perhaps modelled on South Africa’s extended cabinet; a set of intergovernmental councils focused on priority policy issues, supported by dedicated secretariats, and co-governed by the province and municipalities; or enforceable provincial requirements to consult municipalities on matters that affect them. 3. Eliminate unfunded mandates through, for example, provincial legislation or provincial-municipal intergovernmental agreements that require consultation on the fiscal impacts of draft legislation or regulation and that allow any disagreements to be taken to court. 4. Strengthen trilateral relations. Potential models include new location-specific or policy-specific agreements modelled on previous Urban Development Agreements; sector-specific trilateral intergovernmental councils that avoid top-down governance, meet regularly, and are supported by secretariats; or a general trilateral council, through reform of the structure of First Ministers’ Meetings.