Regionalism in Atlantic Canada

A number of distinct regions make up the vast federation of Canada. In the world’s second-largest country by geographic measurement, Canadian regionalism is an issue sometimes oversimplified as being rooted primarily in environmental differences but that, as Brodie argues is a complex environmental, cultural and political equation (Brodie, 1997). Regional disparity in Canada is amongst the widest in the developed world and, to be specific, the Atlantic region has experienced lower wages, wealth and income than the Central and Western regions have. Comprised of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador, Atlantic Canada has experienced political and economic impacts of regionalism since Confederation. (Cochrane and Perrella 2012) Regional disparity can result from a variety of different factors, including manufacturing base, distribution of natural resources, population and climate. The Atlantic provinces’ economies have been amongst the weakest in North America (Matteo et. Al, 2016), and have been challenged by relatively high rates of unemployment. This essay will focus on the how regionalism has affected economic growth in the Atlantic Provinces.

Although regionalism affected and in some ways dictated Canadian sub-economies from Confederation in 1867, it became a matter of acute federal scrutiny in the 1960s when the Government of Canada created the Department of Regional Economic Expansion as a response to regional gaps (McGee, 1992). Speaking about the new Department to the House of Commons, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau explained the need for the intervention:

We know ... that regional disparities have existed since the very first days of Confederation. We also know that the federal government has attempted, especially for a few years now, to reduce such disparities by having recourse to equalization payments, cost sharing programs and an increasing number of regional development projects. Most of those regional development programs were the responsibility of five Ministers, I should say of several departments and various agencies. Mr. Speaker, after all such programs have been consolidated under the sole Department of Regional Economic Expansion, we shall be clearly in a better position to achieve real coordination and centralization of our endeavours and undertakings…(McGee, 1992:65)

Interest in regionalism seemed to intensify as the world economy grew and changed, such that, by the 1990s, it was recognized as a major national and international economic influence in the form of new types of regional agreements and a new overall approach to regionalism. Bhagwati, an economist from the University of Cambridge, called the resulting condition the “new regionalism”. “New regionalism” was marked by expanding international trade and investment, focused regional grouping and new, modernized regional entities connected by business and economic policy. It is clear from this perspective that fragmentation was the result, not just at the global economic level but at the supra-national level and also in the traditional economic space of the province or state. (E. and Frolova 2014)

Another form of regionalism is “regional development”, which is described as representing regional ideas and movements on a smaller scale. Where “new regionalism” has the goal of liberalizing two countries trying to enhance closer ties, “regional development” aims to take advantage of the internal potential of the province for future development. Regionalism is included in the spatial and regional economics of regional development. Regional economics study the effects of deployment activities for future prosperity. International spatial and regional economics distinguish between each other by different levels of exploration and perceptions of space. However, the specific impacts of each of these forms of regionalism depend on the level of integration achieved. A high level of integration involves effective unification of markets with the consequence of a significant decrease in transaction costs and high mobility and production factors. Regional integration can have a very significant impact on regional development. By reducing social and economic inequalities from province to province, regional policies can spark economic growth through production specialization and a snowball effect from there.

As previously indicated, however, regionalism transcends economic policy and impacts culture and politics, as well. Cochrane and Perella (2012) make three interesting arguments about cultural regionalism based on their research. First, they assert that cultural regionalism cannot be empirically quantified and is instead a social physiological concept; that is, a physiological attachment of the people, institutions, and the characteristics of a given geographical area. Second, Cochrane and Perella maintain that regional differences are unlikely traceable to one sole cause but, rather, to a multitude of causes including geography, institutions, culture and economy. Their third argument is that each person has a different concept and perception of “region” and, because each person is affected by the conditions and characteristics of each region in which they reside, and because each person resides in a number of regions simultaneously, regional characteristics have an impact on both general public opinion and individual behavior. These three arguments support the position that people are impacted by the cultural and the physical environments that they exist within. The regional differences to which individuals are exposed become their experiential norms that influence their political opinions, their cultural differences and the overall economic structure in which they operate.

Cochrane and Perella performed a traditional study of regional culture in Canada to test political positioning and determined that traditional “regionalism” happens through the individual level control variables, with two exceptions. One variable is that the individual- level variable is introduced in two stages, the purposing being to see if individual- level controls affect the magnitude of interprovincial differences. The other variable is that the last stage of the questioning presents a context variable. The purpose of the context variable of the unemployment rate of a respondent’s constituency was presented to them for the purpose of identifying whether this contextual effect can contribute to an explanation of interregional differences in level of support for government involvement in the economy. After experimenting with multiple different orders of the steps, the results achieved remained the same regardless of the order in which the control variables were entered into the model. Interestingly, the results suggest that in Atlantic Canada, political boundaries