In his 1839 Report on the Affairs of British North America, he recommended that Upper and Lower Canada be united under a single Parliament, with responsible government.
[1] Despite this, however, the titular premier could not generally invoke unilateral authority over his deputy if he wanted to maintain his government's stability; in practice, both men had to agree on virtually any political course of action.
[1] With the introduction of responsible government in 1848, Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine became the first truly democratic leaders of what would eventually become the provinces of Ontario and Quebec in present-day Canada,[1] and some modern historians, most notably John Ralston Saul, have promoted the idea that they should be viewed as Canada's true first Prime Ministers.
It was during their ministry that the first organized moves toward Canadian Confederation took place, and John A. Macdonald himself became the first Prime Minister of Canada in 1867.
The continuing, although informal, government position of the Quebec lieutenant, who is designated as the Prime Minister's primary advisor and spokesman on issues related to Quebec, may be viewed as an indirect descendant of the joint premiership, although the position is far from equivalent in terms of the actual power it wields within a government.