The Rowell–Sirois Commission, officially known as the Royal Commission on Dominion–Provincial Relations, was a Canadian

Royal Commission A royal commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue in some monarchies. They have been held in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Malaysia, Mauritius and Saudi Arabia. In republics an equi ...

that looked into the Canadian economy and federal–provincial relations. It was called in 1937 and reported in 1940. The Commission was chaired first by

Newton Rowell Newton Wesley Rowell, (November 1, 1867 – November 22, 1941) was a Canadian lawyer, politician, judge, and lay leader in the Methodist Church. Rowell led the Ontario Liberal Party from 1911 to 1917 and put forward a platform advocating ...

and then by Joseph Sirois. James McGregor Stewart acted as chief counsel. It was called as a result of the

Great Depression The Great Depression was a severe global economic downturn from 1929 to 1939. The period was characterized by high rates of unemployment and poverty, drastic reductions in industrial production and international trade, and widespread bank and ...

. The attempts to manage the Depression by the government illustrated grave flaws with the Canadian constitution. While the federal government had most of the revenue gathering powers, the provinces had unexpectedly greater expenditure responsibilities. The founders had given the provinces responsibility for

health care Health care, or healthcare, is the improvement or maintenance of health via the preventive healthcare, prevention, diagnosis, therapy, treatment, wikt:amelioration, amelioration or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other disability, physic ...

education Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...

, and welfare when they were only minor concerns, but by 1937, however, they had all become massive expenditure areas. The Commission recommended for the federal government to take over control of

unemployment insurance Unemployment, according to the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), is the proportion of people above a specified age (usually 15) not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work du ...

and

pensions A pension (; ) is a fund into which amounts are paid regularly during an individual's working career, and from which periodic payments are made to support the person's retirement from work. A pension may be either a "defined benefit plan", wher ...

. It also recommended the creation of

equalization payments Equalization payments are cash payments made in some federal systems of government from the federal government to subnational governments with the objective of offsetting differences in available revenue or in the cost of providing services. Many f ...

and large transfers of money from the federal government to the provinces each year. Other recommendations were not adopted because of resistance from the provinces or the federal government.

Sources

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External links

Index to Federal Royal Commissions

Royal commissions in Canada Canada in the world wars and interwar period Constitution of Canada Constitutional commissions Great Depression in Canada 1937 in Canada 1940 in Canada {{canada-hist-stub