Constitutional history of Canada

The 1763 Treaty of Paris confirmed the cession of Canada, including all its dependencies, Acadia (Nova Scotia) and Cape Breton Island to Great Britain.

The Royal Proclamation contained elements that conflicted with the Articles of Capitulation of Montreal, which granted Canadians the privilege to maintain their civil laws and practise their religion.

When James Murray was commissioned as captain general and governor in chief of the Province of Quebec, a four-year military rule ended, and the civil administration of the colony began.

In December 1773, Canadian landlords submitted a petition and a memorandum in which they asked: They expressed their opinion that the time was not right for a house of assembly because the colony could not afford it and suggested that a larger council, composed of both new and old subjects, would be a better choice.

On May 22, 1775, Bishop of Quebec Jean-Olivier Briand sent out a mandement asking the Canadians to close their ears to the call of the "rebels" and defend their country and their king against the invasion.

On October 20, 1789, Home Secretary William Wyndham Grenville wrote a private and secret letter to Carleton, informing him of the plans of the king's counsellors to modify Canada's constitution.

In the first paragraph, Grenville writes: "I am persuaded that it is a point of true Policy to make these Concessions at a time when they may be received as matter of favour, and when it is in Our own power to regulate and direct the manner of applying them, rather than to wait 'till they shall be extorted from Us by a necessity which shall neither leave Us any discretion in the form, nor any merit in the substance of what we give."

Lymburner's revisions were opposed by Whigs such as Charles James Fox, and in the end only the suggestions related to the frequency of elections and the number of representatives were retained.

Containing 50 articles, the act brought the following changes: This partition ensured that Loyalists would constitute a majority in Upper Canada and allow for the application of exclusively British laws in this province.

Leader of the Parti Canadien, Pierre-Stanislas Bédard was the first politician of Lower Canada to formulate a project of reform to put an end to the opposition between the elected Legislative Assembly and the Governor and his Council which answered only the Colonial Office in London.

In 1822, the Secretary of Colonial Office Lord Bathurst and his under-secretary Robert John Wilmot-Horton secretly submitted a bill to British House of Commons which projected the legislative union of the two Canadian provinces.

Supported by Governor Dalhousie, anglophone petitioners from the Eastern Townships, Quebec City and Kingston, the bill submitted in London provided, among other things, that each of the two sections of the new united province would have a maximum of 60 representatives, which would have put the French-speaking majority of Lower Canada in a position of minority in the new Parliament.

Having in their possession a petition of some 60 000 signatures, the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Louis-Joseph Papineau, as well as John Neilson, Member of Parliament, went to London to present the opinion of the majority of the population which they represented.

Faced with the massive opposition of people most concerned with the bill, the British government finally gave up the union project submitted for adoption by its own Colonial Office.

The Royal Commission for the Investigation of all Grievances Affecting His Majesty's Subjects of Lower Canada reported on November 17, 1836, and the Ten resolutions of John Russel were mostly based on it.

With liberal and progressive forces suppressed in Lower Canada, the Catholic Church's influence dominated the French-speaking side of French Canadian/British relations from the 1840s until the Quiet Revolution secularized Quebec society in the 1960s.

Approximately four months after having proclaimed martial law in the district of Montreal, Governor Gosford suspended, on March 27, 1838, the Constitutional Act of 1791 and set up a Special Council.

Following the rebellions, in May 1838, the British government sent Governor General Lord Durham to Lower and Upper Canada in order to investigate the uprisings and to bring forth solutions.

This, as Lord Durham had recommended in his report, resulted in English political control over the French-speaking part of Canada, and ensured the colony's loyalty to the British crown.

Prior to the BNA Act of 1867, the British colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, discussed the possibility of a fusion to counter the threat of American annexation, and to reduce the costs of governance.

The Province of Canada entered these negotiations at the behest of the British government, and this led to the ambivalence of Prince Edward Island, which delayed joining the new Dominion until 1873.

The 36 articles of the act established the territorial limits, the subjects' right to vote, the representation in the Canadian House of Commons, the number of senators, the provincial legislature, permitted the use of English and French in the Parliament and in front of the courts and authorized the setting-up of a denominational education system.

Thus passive Catholic nationalism stylized by Father Lionel Groulx gave way to a more active pursuit of independence, and in 1963 the first bombings by the Front de libération du Québec occurred.

The FLQ's violent pursuit of a socialist and independent Quebec culminated in the 1970 kidnappings of British diplomat, James Cross and then the provincial minister of labour, Pierre Laporte in what is known as the October Crisis.

The Quiet Revolution also forced the evolution of several political parties, and so, in 1966, a reformed Union Nationale led by Daniel Johnson, Sr., returned to power under the slogan "Equality or Independence".

Amongst numerous initiatives, the conference members examined the recommendations of a Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission, the question of a Charter of Rights, regional disparities, and the timelines of a general review of the constitution (the British North America Act).

The provinces were supposed to confirm their acceptance by June 28, 1971, but a change of premiers in Saskatchewan and the reluctance of the federal government to recommend the Charter to Quebec's legislature, due to deficiencies in the clauses dealing with income security, led to the failure of this initiative.

Many Canadians viewed the additional demands as too greatly reducing the power of the federal government, assigning it the role of tax collector and manager of the national border with the United States.

This action (including the creation of a new Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms) came from an initiative by Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau to create a multicultural and bilingual society in all of Canada.

Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien referred the matter over whether a province could unilaterally secede from the federation to the Supreme Court of Canada in December 1999.