Éric Montpetit
Université de Montréal
There is little discussion of relations between the provinces in Canada. When the newspapers mention the topic, it is typically in terms of implausibility or dysfunctionality.
At the end of the 1990s, for example, the rapprochement between the governments of Lucien Bouchard and Mike Harris garnered considerable media coverage, but less to inform readers about the policies on which the two governments were cooperating than to discredit the “paradoxical” relationship between a social-democrat sovereignist government and a right-wing federalist government.
The media coverage of the Council of the Federation, created in 2003 to encourage interprovincial cooperation, is no less negative. While the mandate of the Council is very wide, including the production of analyses in support of interprovincial cooperation, journalists only report on the difficulties that the provinces have in reaching common positions for negotiations with the federal government. Also, relations between the federal government and the provinces are generally more interesting to the media than relations between the provinces.
