Constitutional Politics and the Legacy of the Provincial Rights Movement in Canada

Abstract

The rise of the provincial rights movement in the generation after Confederation forms an important chapter in Canadian constitutionalism. In their attempts to understand the provincial rights movement, however, historians and political scientists have paid insufficient attention to the precise constitutional doctrine that was developed to thwart the centralizing designs of Sir John A. Macdonald. This article shows that the sources of this provincialist constitutional doctrine can be found in the Confederation settlement itself. It further shows how the provincial rights movement subsequently was able to use this doctrine to discredit one of the key centralizing devices of the Macdonald constitution—the veto power of disallowance. And it concludes that the legacy of the provincial rights movement continues to inform the way Canadians think about federalism.

Back to the Future: Historical Political Science and the Promise of Canadian Political Development

“…Smith, 1983J. Smith, , 1988Vipond, 1985Vipond, , 1989. Others focused on the longterm development of ideas and institutions, dwelling on the dynamics of stability and change over time (Elkins, 1989;LaSelva, 1993;Russell, 1991;Vaughan, 1986;Wiseman, 1992), while still others set out to recover and re-examine the "big" ideas that underpinned the work of the Canadian constitutional architects (Ajzenstat, 1985(Ajzenstat, , 1990(Ajzenstat, , 1997Preece, 1984;Resnick, 1987;D.…”

“…For some significant number of political scientists, in other words, there was a sense that one couldn't answer the questions “where do we go from here?” without first asking “how did we get here?”; uncertainty about the future generated renewed interest in the past. Some of the approaches to this genealogical question focused on what we earlier called key events and turning points and led a number of scholars to revisit how Confederation came about and reinterpret what it created (Romney, 1992; P. J. Smith 1987; J. Smith, 1983, 1988; Vipond, 1985, 1989). Others focused on the long-term development of ideas and institutions, dwelling on the dynamics of stability and change over time (Elkins, 1989; LaSelva, 1993; Russell, 1991; Vaughan, 1986; Wiseman, 1992), while still others set out to recover and re-examine the “big” ideas that underpinned the work of the Canadian constitutional architects (Ajzenstat, 1985, 1990, 1997; Preece, 1984; Resnick, 1987; D. Smith, 1995).…”