The Canada Apprentice Loan: Adventures in Federalism
As I noted a few months back when writing about the 50th anniversary of the Canada Student Loans Program, CSLP was at the heart of one of the federation’s key moments in fiscal federalism. In 1964, Lester Pearson was running into opposition in Quebec on two of his major policy initiatives: the Canada Pension Plan and the Canada Student Loans Program. A deal on both was eventually struck: any province could “opt-out” of a federal program and receive a compensating “alternative payment”, so