Maritime Union - Regional Cooperation

Regional Cooperation

Support for a union of the three provinces has historically ebbed and flowed, in conjunction with various socio-economic and political events throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In the immediate years following Confederation, the anti-Confederate movement in the region advocated Maritime Union and separation from the new federation, fearing that the wealth of the provinces would be sapped to support development and growth of central and western Canada.

The concept gained credibility in the 1960s at a time when Maritime governments, in partnership with the federal government, were progressively tackling economic underperformance with various regional development programs. The growth of civil service and social program expenditures in the three provinces, coupled with out-migration and declining national political clout, led the provincial governments to examine ways to pool resources and better lobby for the region in Ottawa.

While an actual union was debated in all three provinces, the discussion evolved largely around regional cooperation. Several meetings between all members of the legislative assemblies and the cabinets of the three provinces were conducted during the 1960s, with the result being several important regional cooperation agreements in the areas of health care, post-secondary and secondary education, and in regional intergovernmental coordination, particularly when dealing with Ottawa.

Several institutions were formed by the early 1970s to facilitate intra-regional cooperation, including the Council of Maritime Premiers, and various organisations such as the Maritime Provinces Higher Education Commission and the Land Registry Information Service. During this time, the secondary school curriculum in each province was standardised and provincial funding to post-secondary education was coordinated to eliminate duplication, particularly among professional programs (i.e. Education, Law, Engineering, Medicine, Pharmacology, Dentistry, Social Work, Criminology, Veterinary Medicine, etc.).

Equally important to the establishment of these formal organisations was the coordination by the mid-1970s among provincial governments for legislation to harmonise policies and programs, as well as to arrive at common positions on federal-provincial negotiations. By the 1980s, the Council of Maritime Premiers was renamed the Council of Atlantic Premiers with the entry of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador into the partnership. The CAP has led all four provincial governments to extend cooperation in the adoption of common consumption taxes, insurance legislation harmonisation, the Atlantic Lottery Corporation, venture capital funding, a harness racing commission, and the coordination of provincial government procurements, among other items.

In addition to historical precedent, there were more pressing reasons to reorganise the colonies. The United States, embroiled in the Civil War, posed a military threat. Many prominent colonial politicians felt that the united colonies would be able to mount a more effective defence. In Britain, the Colonial Office also favoured a reorganisation of British North America. The British hoped that union would make the colonies less reliant on Britain, and therefore less costly to maintain. Gordon's own ambition may also have been a factor—he envisioned himself as the governor of the united Maritime colonies.

The idea of Maritime Union—the reorganisation of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia into a single British colony—was not new. Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick had once been administered as parts of Nova Scotia, until 1769 and 1784, respectively. Several of Lieutenant-Governor Gordon's predecessors, including J. H. T. Manners-Sutton, had also favoured reuniting the three colonies.