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Local Autonomy and Central Administrative Control in Saskatchewan*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2014

Donald V. Smiley
Donald V. Smiley*
Affiliation:
University of British Columbia
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Extract

Several investigations dealing with provincial-local relations in particular jurisdictions in Canada have been undertaken in recent years. The prevailing emphasis has been on the distribution of taxation sources and the revenues derived from these sources between the two levels of government and, to a lesser degree, on the related question of the allocation of responsibilities for particular services between the provincial and local governments. The clear implications of most of this discussion are that all would be well with our local authorities if they were assured of revenues commensurate with their responsibilities and that local officials and their representatives admit to few ailments which more generous subventions from the senior governments would not cure.

This paper attempts to focus attention on another aspect of central-local relations as strategic in determining the welfare of our local institutions as is the scale of central financial assistance. Characteristically, central governments not only provide a portion of the revenues expended by the local authorities within their boundaries but also engage in an extensive and varied range of activities to regulate, supervise, educate, and otherwise influence the conduct of elected and appointed local officials. Control, viewed broadly as any exercise of central influence, can take these forms: (1) legislative control, in which central influence is exerted through legislative enactments, and subordinate legislation issued under them, enjoining or requiring certain local activities or procedures; (2) judicial control, in which the central government requests a court of law to order particular local authorities or local officials to do or refrain from doing certain things as are allegedly required by law; (3) administrative control, in which elected or appointed officials of the central executive, acting within the authority conferred on. them by law, influence or attempt to influence the conduct of local governments.

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science/Revue canadienne de economiques et science politique , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , May 1960 , pp. 299 - 313
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association 1960

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Footnotes

*

The writer was formerly a member of the Secretariat of the Saskatchewan Local Government Continuing Committee. He alone is responsible for the contents of this article and views expressed are not those of the Committee or the Government of Saskatchewan.

References

1 Judicial control is an important technique in most of the American States and, to a less degree, in the United Kingdom. It appears to have had little significance in central-local relations in Canada and in ProfessorCrawford's, K. G. standard text, Canadian Municipal Government (Toronto, 1954)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, there is no mention of it. I have found no instance of its use in Saskatchewan.

2 For the history of rural local government in Saskatchewan, see Reid, A. N., “Local Government in the Northwest Territories: II, The Rural Municipalities,” Saskatchewan History, autumn, 1949, 1–14 Google Scholar; Report of the Committee on Promncial-Municipal Relations (Regina, 1950)Google Scholar, Part I, and Roemer, Ruth, History of Rural Local Government in Saskatchewan (Regina, 1955) (mimeo.).Google Scholar

3 The various Reports of the Royal Commission on Agriculture and Rural Life published between 1955 and 1958 give an indication of this philosophy although the Reports are not, of course, official policy statements of the Government. See particularly Report No. 14, chap. v.

4 For a comprehensive analysis of the rural municipality as a unit of local administration see Report No. 4 of the Royal Commission on Agriculture and Rural Life, Rural Roads and Local Government, chaps, v, vi.

5 The Department has other responsibilities not directly relevant to this study. See Dawson, Geo. F., The Municipal System of Saskatchewan (Regina, 1955), chap, IX.Google Scholar

6 The very large number of rural jurisdictions has, however, frustrated attempts to make contacts as frequent and informal as most provincial officials concerned would wish.

7 To cite only three such statements see Crawford, K. G., Canadian Municipal Government (Toronto, 1954), 343 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; New Sources of Local Revenue by a Study Group of the Royal Institute of Public Administration (London, 1956), 13 Google Scholar; and Jackson, R. M., The Machinery of Local Government (London, 1958), 266.Google Scholar

8 Jackson, , Machinery of Local Government, 266.Google Scholar

9 First European Conference of Local Authorities, Documents and Texts Adopted, First Session, 01 12–14, 1957, Strasbourg, 58–9.Google Scholar

10 First European Conference.

11 The memorandum is reprinted in Hanson, Eric, Local Government in Alberta (Toronto, 1956), 115–26.Google Scholar

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Ibid.

15 See Address of Mr. A. W. Morrison, Deputy Minister of Municipal Affairs of Alberta to Convention of Rural Municipal Secretary-Treasurers' Association of Saskatchewan, at Saskatoon on May 23, 1957 (mimeo.), 13. At the 1957 Session of the Alberta Legislature several acts were amended in this direction and provincial controls in relation to several phases of community planning, appointment of municipal secretary-treasurers, auditors and assessors, investment of capital funds, etc., were eliminated.

16 Cmd. 7870.

17 Ibid., p. 6. Italics mine.

18 Cmd. 445. See also Local Government Finance in Scotland, Cmd. 208, 1957 Google Scholar, and Local Government and Central Departments in Scotland, Cmd. 445, 1958.Google Scholar The last decade has seen a growing literature on central-local administrative relations in the United Kingdom. See especially Chester, A. N., Central and Local Government (London, 1951)Google Scholar; Harris, John S., British Government Inspection (London, 1955)Google Scholar; Local Government and Central Control, West Midland Group Study (London, 1956)Google Scholar; and Jackson, Machinery of Local Government, chap. x.