J07 - Immigration and Trade Policy: A Provincial Affair
Date: Jun 2 | Time: 03:15pm to 04:45pm | Location:
Irregular Border Crossings and Intergovernmental Relations in Canada: Mireille Paquet (Concordia University), Robert Schertzer (University of Toronto)
Abstract: Since 2017, the number of irregular border crossings at the Canada-U.S. border has spiked. Mostly concentrated in Quebec, these population movements have led to the implementation of several operation policy changes. Yet, because of the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement and because of Canada’s commitment to humanitarian immigration, these crossings cannot be stopped altogether. This paper explores the impact of these irregular border crossings on intergovernmental relations. Engaging with the work on wicked policy problems and on complex policy issues and using data from interviews with public officials, we examine how these irregular crossings pressured governments to work together and exposed limitations in the existing system. We assess how these population movements have been managed through three dimensions : intergovernmental administrative relations; intergovernmental institutions in the area of immigration and fiscal federalism. Our analysis shows that, despite some high-level political tensions and initial gaps in coordination and service delivery, existing IGR immigration institutions and relations have remained largely effective during the 2017-2019 period. In the short to medium term, this has resulted in effective operational coordination between governments and has supported policy innovation in service delivery. Yet, our analysis also hints at how ill-prepared existing IGR institutions and Canadian governments are to manage the long-term intergovernmental consequences of these types of population movements.
The Changing Scope of Quebec's Immigration and Integration Policy Proposals, 1976-2018: Alex B. Rivard (University of British Columbia)
Abstract: Immigration and immigrant integration policies have been subject to considerable debate within Québec. While the province has incrementally increased its policy competences in regards to the selection of immigrants (Seidle 2010), the extent to which the Québec state should seek to integrate (or assimilate) immigrant minority groups into Québec society remains contested. This paper looks at the differences in immigration and integration policies proposed by the PLQ and PQ since 1976 and argues that both parties effectively proposed similar policies in this regard. The parties varied little in these areas and, at times, removed the issue of immigration/integration from election campaigns entirely. This paper further argues that the PLQ began to diverge from the PQ in regards to these policies with the selection of Jean Charest as leader—who brought with him economic-minded immigration policies. The divergence between parties was further encouraged as a result of the entrance of the ADQ in 2007. This insurgent party effectively forced the PQ to adopt more hard-line integration policies. The result of the ADQ’s insurgence ultimately meant that the PQ shifted from being a party which valued pluralist and society-based integration policies to a party which now aimed to empower the state to act as a tool of integration via values tests and the promotion of laïcité. This paper further demonstrates that third parties, or insurgent parties, have significantly altered the landscape of Québec’s immigration/integration policy space.
Institutional Conversion and the Historical Roots of Sub-federal Participation in Trade Politics: Canada and Germany Compared: Jorg Broschek (Wilfrid Laurier University)
Abstract: Sub-federal units engage increasingly in international trade policy, a domain that usually represents an exclusive jurisdiction of the federal level. Although sub-federal units’ efforts to take on a more active role in trade policy appears to be a more general trend (Broschek and Goff, forthcoming), it is not possible to identify a uniform process converging towards one model of sub-level involvement. In fact, there exists considerable variation regarding the frequency, timing, and type of sub-level involvement or activity. While the Canadian provinces are comparatively strong and often actively involved in the formulation of trade policy agreements, the German Länder have remained rather peripheral – but not entirely weak - actors. Using Canada and Germany as two contrasting case studies, this paper sketches two different pathways of sub-federal engagement in trade politics. It argues that conversion is the mechanism responsible for the emergence of sub-federal actors as stakeholders in both cases. Conversion, however, interacts with two different institutional contexts of federalism, which affects not only how sub-federal units participate but also their relative strength vis-à-vis the federal level.
Policy Attention and Immigration: A View from the Canadian Provinces: Catherine Xhardez (Concordia University)
Abstract: In Canada, immigration falls under both provincial and federal jurisdiction (concurrent power, with federal paramountcy in case of conflict). Since the 1990s, Canadian provinces have been increasingly active in such policymaking. But despite geographic and economic differences as well as contrasting partisan configurations, all provinces have chosen to become players in Canada’s immigration regime, thus creating asymmetry in immigration policies across the country. Thanks to bilateral agreements, Canadian provinces can now partially select their immigrants and have acquired settlement capacities. However, while a lot has been said about federal-provincial negotiations in the matter, much less is known about interprovincial attention to these issues. In this paper, I ask: How do provinces perceive this horizontal asymmetry in the management of immigration? When discussing immigration, do provincial elites pay attention to the other provinces? If so, where is this attention most often directed to? To answer these questions, I adopt a discursive institutionalist approach to produce a longitudinal and qualitative analysis of parliamentary debates in the Canadian provinces between 2010 and 2019. This is done by tracing political elites’ arguments and their attention to other provinces’ agreements with the federal government and the resulting immigration policies. By ‘taking ideas and discourse seriously’ (Schmidt 2010), this study shows that political elites regularly use other provinces as examples when arguing for changes in immigration policy. Moreover, looking at interprovincial policy attention highlights which provinces are most often mobilized as examples, by whom, and where interprovincial competition is strongest.