Section 3 of the Constitution Act, 1867
It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, to declare by Proclamation that, on and after a Day therein appointed, not being more than Six Months after the passing of this Act, the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick shall form and be One Dominion under the Name of Canada ; and on and after that Day those Three Provinces shall form and be One Dominion under that Name accordingly.
The Quebec Resolutions stated that the Queen would be solicited to determine both "the rank and name of the Federated Provinces".
The Governor General of the Province of Canada, Lord Monck, had raised concerns about using the term "kingdom".
"[18] Neither the Queen nor Prime Minister Derby were advised that the delegates had originally wanted the rank of "Kingdom".
Governor General Lord Monck appointed John A. Macdonald as the first prime minister of Canada.
Macdonald then spent the months of May and June forming the new Cabinet, which required balancing a number of regional, sectarian, and linguistic issues.
[23] For example, in Reference re the Initiative and Referendum Act, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council stated: The scheme of the Act passed in 1867 was thus, not to weld the Provinces into one, nor to subordinate Provincial Governments to a central authority, but to establish a Central Government in which these Provinces should be represented, entrusted with exclusive authority only in affairs in which they had a common interest.
[24]The Supreme Court of Canada has cited this passage with approval, notably in Reference re Secession of Quebec.
Laurier summarised the proposal: "...we have passed the state when the term 'Colony' could be applied to Canada, New Zealand, and Australia".
The report of the Inter-Imperial Relations Committee of the Conference, commonly referred to as the Balfour Declaration, made this point clear, stating that the United Kingdom and the Dominions were "autonomous communities within the British Empire, equal in status, in no way subordinate one to another in any aspect of their domestic or external affairs".
Some commentators, such as Eugene Forsey, argued that the formal name of the country remains "Dominion of Canada".
Section 146 of the Act provided for the future admission of Newfoundland, Prince Edward Island, Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory, and British Columbia into the union.
