Kathy L. Brock – författare

In a time of growing political, social, and economic challenges, the health of a federation depends on its ability to balance unity with diversity—respecting regional autonomy while fostering common allegiances and objectives. Assessing Canadian Federalism revisits the founding principles of Canada's constitutional design to evaluate how effectively the federation continues to meet this dual mandate today.Drawing on the original ethos of Canada's union—self-rule for its constituent units alongside the legitimacy of common national institutions—the book introduces a three-part test to assess the performance of the Canadian federal system. It asks whether federal institutions are addressing contemporary realities, whether they transform tensions between unity and diversity into constructive outcomes, and whether the balance between shared and self-rule produces stable and fair outcomes. Through five compelling case studies including constitutional conflicts, Indigenous-state relations, Quebec's identity politics, Senate reform and Western alienation, and the Supreme Court's evolving role, the book applies this test to reveal both the strengths and vulnerabilities of Canada's federal framework. The results of political scientist Kathy L. Brock's investigation here offer fresh insight into the resilience, adaptability, and future of the Canadian federation in an increasingly volatile global environment.

Managing Federalism through Pandemic summarizes and analyses multiple policy dimensions of Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and related policy issues from the perspective of Canadian federalism. Contributors address the relative effectiveness of intergovernmental cooperation at the summit level and in policy fields including emergency management, public health, national security, Indigenous Peoples and governments, border governance, crisis communications, fiscal federalism, income security policies (CERB), supply chain resilience, and interacting energy and climate policies.Despite serious policy failures of individual governments, repeated fluctuations in the overall effectiveness of pandemic management, and growing public frustration across provinces and regions, contributors show how processes for intergovernmental cooperation adapted reasonably well to the pandemic’s unprecedented stresses, particularly at the outset. The book concludes that, despite individual policy failures, Canada’s decentralized approach to policy management often enabled regional adaptation to varied conditions, helped to contain serious policy failures, and contributed to various degrees of policy learning across governments. Managing Federalism through Pandemic reveals how the pandemic exposed structural policy weaknesses which transcend federalism but have significant implications for how governments work together (or don’t) to promote the well-being of citizens.