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All laws, rules, and practices that structure the way the Canadian political system runs add up to the "constitution" of Canada. The Constitution includes a great many statutes, orders-in-council, and judicial decisions that interpret these documents. In addition, there are informal rules, called constitutional conventions, that regulate how our political actors behave. Finally, there are some traditions and customs that may not be obligatory but are followed.
Peter Oliver has written an interesting article, " The 1982 Patriation of the Canadian Constitution - Reflections on Continuity and Change," that provides an overview analysis of the significance of, and the events surrounding, the Constitution Act, 1982. CONSTITUTIONAL DOCUMENTSFor a comprehensive list of documents that relate to
Canada's Constitution—and the full text of those documents—you
should visit William F. Maton's collection of constitutional
documents and proposals. There you will find the "Constitution of
Canada" documents, as well as other important historical documents and
constitutional proposals. The two most important constitutional documents
are:
The Constitution Act, 1982. This act created for the first time a set of amending procedures for the Constitution to be amended entirely in Canada. Until 1982, many changes to the then British North America Acts had to be carried out by the British Parliament. This act also includes the Charter of Rights & Freedoms. The Constitution Act, 1982, was actually created as a part of the Canada Act, 1982. The Canada Act ended any further British legislative authority over Canada. Other documents that are of particular interest in Canada's constitutional development are:
documents
relating to the Constitution and its renewal. One of the sites provides
background
on the Constitution that may answer many questions. A detailed history
of Canada's constitutional evolution is also provided here.
Another interesting site, run by the National Library of Canada, has a collection of discussions about the pre-Confederation context and development of Canada's Constitution. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTSThere are five
amending processes laid out in Part V of the Constitution Act, 1982.
Since these amending formulas came into effect in 1982, there have been
nine formal amendments to the Constitution of Canada:
Regional VetoesThe federal government enacted legislation in 1996 that
effectively places a new amending process on top of the "7 & 50"
formula of s.38 of the Constitution Act, 1982, with a statutory requirement
that the federal government can only introduce constitutional amendments
that have broad regional support. In effect, this has created a system
of regional vetoes to amendments under s.38. You can read the
details in the Constitutional
Amendments Act.
There are serious issues with the desirability and constitutionality of the regional veto formula. For a flavour of this debate, see the evidence of witnesses who appeared before the Special Senate Committee that examined the Bill (C-110). Proposed AmendmentsA number of proposals for major changes to the Constitution
have been made over the years, without success. Several comprehensive
packages have come close, having initial agreement among the first ministers,
but failed to get enough sustained support to be made into law.
The first ministers have agreed on two other sets of proposed amendments, but they failed to pass:
The results of the 1995 Quebec Sovereignty Referendum are available on-line. With the precedent of the 1992 referendum, many believe that a future package of constitutional amendments could not be passed without popular approval through another referendum. Indeed, both Alberta and British Columbia have legislation that requires the holding of a referendum in those provinces on constitutional amendments. In the case of Alberta, the referendum must be held before a vote is held in the legislature on the resolution to amend the Constitution. The B.C. government has to put any proposed amendment to a referendum even before introducing a motion in the legislature.
Eva H. Lyman's brief argument for constituent assemblies RELATED LINKSYou can find more information related to constitutional
issues in other sections of Nelson's Canadian Politics on the Web:
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