Nickle's detractors, however, charged him with being motivated more by spite and chagrin over his failed attempt to obtain a knighthood for his father-in-law, Daniel Gordon, the principal of Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.
The power of a mere resolution by this House, if acceded to, would create such a condition that no principle which secures life or liberty would be safe.
[4]Moreover, as a matter touching the royal prerogative, Bennett had already reported to the House on 17 May 1933 that the Nickle Resolution was of no force or of null effect, stating that knighting of his minister George Halsey Perley was: … in conformity with established constitutional practice, it being the considered view of His Majesty's government in Canada that the motion, with respect to honours, adopted on the 22nd day of May, 1919, by a majority vote of the members of the Commons House only of the 13th parliament (which was dissolved on the 4th day of October, 1921) is not binding upon His Majesty or His Majesty's government in Canada or the seventeenth Parliament of Canada.
[6]To these official statements can be added what Bennett wrote in a 1934 letter to Member of Parliament John Ritchie MacNicoll, when he stated his view that: So long as I remain a citizen of the British Empire and a loyal subject of the King, I do not propose to do otherwise than assume the prerogative rights of the Sovereign to recognize the services of his subjects.Moreover, as Bennett stated opening the 1934 debate about the Nickle Resolution: That was as ineffective in law as it is possible for any group of words to be.
[8] When a vote was called on 14 March 1934 on a private member's (Humphrey Mitchell, Labour, East Hamilton) earlier resolution to require the prime minister to cease making recommendations to the King for titles (which Bennett in January conceded as "within its [the House's] constitutional rights" and "no affront to the sovereign", although valid only for one term), this renewed Nickle-like Resolution was defeated 113 to 94.
The House of Commons of Canada, by this vote, refused to reaffirm or reinstate the Nickle Resolution or its attempts to prevent the Prime Minister's involvement in the exercise of the royal prerogative of granting titles to Canadians.
When William Lyon Mackenzie King returned to power in 1935, he ignored the precedent set by Bennett's government, and resumed the former policy.
[9] In 1968, Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson's government published Regulations respecting the acceptance and wearing by Canadians of Commonwealth and foreign orders, decorations and medals.
The best-known modern application of the Nickle Resolution occurred when Prime Minister Jean Chrétien attempted to use it to prevent Canadian publishing mogul Conrad Black from being appointed a British life peer by the government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
This ruling, however, reportedly caused discomfort for Queen Elizabeth II, who did not wish to judge between the conflicting advice of two prime ministers.
The Nickle Resolution was not an effective instrument to establish Canada's desire to end the granting of titular honours to Canadians.
Also honoured following the Nickle Resolution was Sir Frederick Banting, the Canadian medical doctor who co-won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for the discovery of insulin.
The Government of Canada made no objection when, near the end of the Second World War, British prime minister, Winston Churchill, recommended that the King bestow a knighthood on Sir William Stephenson.
Another significant example of government indecision over the matter of titular honours involves former Canadian governor general Vincent Massey.
Shortly after coming to power in 1957, John Diefenbaker was initially receptive, but ultimately changed his mind and so informed the Queen in 1960.
In addition to this extraterritorial anomaly, even today the Governor General of Canada is actively involved in the creation of knights and dames via presiding over the Canadian branch of the Order of St John, conferring knighthoods and damehoods on some of its members in ceremonies at which the governor general performs the act of investing new recipients with their honour.
During the premiership of Tony Blair, at least two persons holding British citizenship were granted titular honours by the Crown before the Black peerage issue, which brought the matter to the Canadian prime minister's attention.
No doubt Premier Lévesque would have frowned on any anglophone premier being knighted "Sir" by the Queen of Canada.In addition, on 4 November 1999, she brought to the Senate's notice the fact that in the first decade alone after the Nickle Resolution was debated, there were many distinguished Canadians who have received 646 orders and distinctions from foreign non-British, non-Canadian sovereigns between 1919 and February 1929.In February 2004, the Department of International Trade announced the impending visit to Sydney of Sir Terry Matthews, dual citizen of the United Kingdom and Canada, with a press release that included the following passage: "Sir Terry is the Chairman of Mitel Networks.
Appointment to the highest rank of the New Zealand Order of Merit grants members the right to use the titles sir or dame.
In March 2009, John Key requested to Elizabeth II that the order be resumed at the pre-2000 grades and granting of knighthoods and damehoods was continued.