“A Justifiable Obsession”: Conservative Ontario’s Relations with Ottawa, 1943–1985 by P.E. Bryden (review)

Penny Bryden refers in the book’s title to Premier Bill Davis’s 1981 comment that for Ontario “[c]onfederation has always been a justifiable obsession.” Resuming the story of Ontario’s intergovernmental relationships with Ottawa and the other provinces where Christopher Armstrong concluded his book, The Politics of Federalism: Ontario’s Relations with the Federal Government, 1867–1942 (1981), over three decades ago, Bryden fills a large gap in the historiography of Ontario’s political past. Her focus is the often vaunted but surprisingly little-studied Big Blue Machine that dominated Ontario’s politics under the Progressive Conservative premierships of George Drew, Leslie Frost, John Robarts, and Bill Davis between 1943 and 1985. Bryden ably recounts how each of these leaders in turn tried, ultimately with only limited success, to enhance Ontario’s political influence and autonomy throughout Canada. Central to her explanation is a “model of inverted intrastate federalism” by which Ontario articulated “not just a national vision, but also, ultimately, an approach to fundamental institutional issues within the Canadian federal structure.” By documenting in detail the succession of provincial policy platforms with which the Ontario government attempted to promote its national objectives, Bryden presents a “corrective” view of Ontario political culture “that does not simply conflate province and nation, but takes responsibility for the idea of nation.”

Beginning with the premiership of George Drew (1943–48), who clashed openly with Liberal prime minister Mackenzie King, Ontario attempted to construct networks of support with the other provinces as a means of championing alternatives to Ottawa’s position on shared issues of overarching importance such as taxation and social policy. In part owing to the other provinces’ understandable suspicions that Ontario’s primary motivation was the advancement of its own interests, Drew’s initiatives often met with resistance. Bryden credits Drew’s more tactful successor, Leslie Frost (1949–61), with fostering a generally positive working relationship with Ottawa and conflating Ontario’s interests with those of Canada. On complex matters such as pensions and unemployment insurance, Frost’s government proved adept at mediating between the other provinces and the federal government, even if the final outcomes did not always favour Ontario. For much of John Robarts’s (1961–71) turn at the provincial helm, intergovernmental relations were dominated by concerns over Quebec’s preferred place in the federation. The result, Bryden explains, was Ontario’s decision to make constitutional reform a top priority through novel initiatives such as the Ontario Advisory Committee on Confederation and the Confederation of Tomorrow Conference. By adopting mega-intergovernmental projects to facilitate dialogue among the federal and provincial governments, Ontario hoped to avoid being further sidelined by the increasingly frequent bilateral discussions taking place between Quebec and Ottawa, particularly in the wake of its disappointing failure to persuade a majority of the provinces to accept its national vision for tax sharing, welfare services, and health care. Advocating national unity and securing a “functional federation” were likewise a preoccupation of Bill Davis’s tenure (1971–85), although the province took yet another strategic turn by focusing on “ends that were specifically in the provincial interest and would have short-term rewards, rather than continuing to reflect on the national interest and pursue long-term goals.” By that point, Ontario’s traditional dominance among the provinces was also being challenged by Alberta’s increasing oil and natural gas wealth.

Overall, as Bryden has shown, Ontario’s record during the often complex federal-provincial negotiations that occurred with increasing frequency throughout the Big Blue Machine’s uninterrupted forty-two-year rule was decidedly mixed: Ontario influenced substantively the often contentious intergovernmental debates over social and economic policy, yet its own provincial goals and national vision for shaping and financing the postwar welfare state were never fully realized. Bryden’s detailed and thoroughly researched account of the methods and motivations of Ontario’s governments between 1943 and 1985 might not necessarily...