Charles Conteh (Professor, Political Science, Brock University)
Local and regional municipalities are at the frontline of Canada’s effort to tackle the challenges of breakneck technological changes, resource scarcity, demographic shifts, and the mounting ecological crisis of climate change. Are municipalities, with their seemingly constrained jurisdictional autonomy and limited resources, standing at the edge of the cliff? Evidence points to cities and regions across the country deploying various innovative initiatives over the past two decades in responding to current and emergent challenges. The proposed paper examines these trends in Canada, focusing on how several midsized regions across the country are adapting to the growing complexity of economic development and environmental sustainability by working across jurisdictional boundaries. Drawing insights from the concept of multilevel governance (MLG) as a framework for thinking about policy alignment across jurisdictions, the paper will investigate the emergent institutional, structural, and procedural mechanisms by which local and regional entities are navigating the currents of change in Canada’s multi-tiered system. The MLG literature calls attention to the fluid mechanisms by which lower-tier jurisdictions like municipalities interact and engage in joint policy action with upper-tier jurisdictions. It also sheds light on the porous boundaries of local and regional governance at the strategic interface between the state, market and society. The paper concludes with practical and theoretical implications for thinking about local and regional policy innovation and governance in the context of 21st-century Canadian federalism.
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