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Do we find uniformity or diversity in the K-12 education sectors across the Canadian provinces? Scholars of federalism describe Canada's federation as one of the most decentralized in the world where provincial governments enjoy greater autonomy than their sub-national counterparts in other countries. Canadian education is regarded as one of the most decentralized policy sectors where the sub-national governments have complete legal, administrative, and financial responsibility for elementary and secondary education. Moreover, like many federations, coordination and cooperation in various policy areas among the different governments is often difficult to achieve. Conflict, competition, and acrimony have often characterized the relations between the two levels of government and among the sub-national jurisdictions contributing to substantial inter-jurisdictional variations in certain policy fields. Finally, Canadian provinces demonstrate significant diversity on factors such as political economy, demographics, and political culture, which are implicated by both public policy scholars and education policy scholars as critical elements that influence the shape and form of educational policies. Given these conditions, a logical expectation would be that significant inter-provincial variations should characterize education in Canada. The central findings reported here, however, are puzzling. Despite the sub-national autonomy, the lack of overarching programming bolstered by national enforcement mechanisms, and the salient socio-economic and political differences among the provinces, the elementary and secondary education arenas are essentially mirrored across all 10 jurisdictions. Rather than substantial diversity, the provincial education sectors exhibit remarkable uniformity thus constituting a national system of education in the absence of formal intervention by the federal government. This is not to deny the persistence of provincial particularities and idiosyncrasies; but, in the main, the formal K-12 education sectors are replicated from coast to coast. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]