Rowell-Sirois Commission
Encyclopedia
The Rowell-Sirois Commission officially known as the Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations was a Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 Royal Commission
Royal Commission
In Commonwealth realms and other monarchies a Royal Commission is a major ad-hoc formal public inquiry into a defined issue. They have been held in various countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Saudi Arabia...

 looking into the Canadian economy and federal-provincial relations. It was called in 1937 and reported in 1940.

The Commission was chaired first by Newton Wesley Rowell and then by Joseph Sirois. It was called as a result of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...

. 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
Health care is the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in humans. Health care is delivered by practitioners in medicine, chiropractic, dentistry, nursing, pharmacy, allied health, and other care providers...

, education
Education
Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts...

, and welfare when these were only minor concerns; by 1937, however, these had all become massive expenditure areas.

The Commission recommended that the federal government take over control of unemployment insurance and pension
Pension
In general, a pension is an arrangement to provide people with an income when they are no longer earning a regular income from employment. Pensions should not be confused with severance pay; the former is paid in regular installments, while the latter is paid in one lump sum.The terms retirement...

s. It also recommended the creation of equalization payments
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....

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

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