Week 3 - Brief history of the Canadian State

The Broad Points

Canadian history is about struggles along a number of fault lines and cleavages. These are all driving factors:

• Geographical & continental

• Aboriginal

• English-French

• Class

• Gender

• Race

It is also a history of elite accommodation punctuated by the sometimes violent protests of those excluded from the process. 

Selected Dates in Canadian History

Canada's peoples without history

• The Aboriginal peoples
  • Continent spent the 1000 years prior to 1500 in relative stability
  • The economies were simple - organized around food supply they were economies adapted to the cyclical character of nature.
    
• European presence
  • Resource extraction
  • Vikings
  • Basque (and other European) fishery

The Imperial Arrival:

• Cabot 1497 - financed by Henry VII
• Jacques Cartier 1534 - financed by France - claim to the St. Lawrence
• Martin Frobisher - 1576 /Henry Hudson - claim to Hudson's Bay for England
  
  

Importance of European context

• spurring exploration - Global race - Brits v. Spanish, Brits v. French
• slowing exploration - internal struggles.
  
  

First Permanent Communities:

• Mixture of national advantage, religion, humanitarianism, greed personal ambition, and sheer fantasy.
• Attempt to colonize Newfoundland by English - failed
• French sites at Acadia and the St. Lawrence Valley
  • Champlain and Quebec City
  • out of Quebec the French colonists explore inland.
• English colonial focus in the colonies to the South.
  
  

1627 - England and France go to War - 100 years war, fought in Europe and in what is now the Maritimes and the St. Lawrence.

1713 - Treaty of Utrecht

• French turn over Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to British
• mid-1700s - founding of Halifax and encouragement of British immigration
• = forcible explulsion of the Acadian population (about 6000).
  

1670 - Hudson's Bay Company is granted charter by Charles II

1756 - Seven Years War: Context for the defeat of French Canada

• Officially began in Europe although skirmishes had been a occuring in North America for several years.
  

1759 - situation grave for New France

• 100 years struggling against the environment, Native peoples, and the British (south and the Navy) had them against the wall.
• Battle on the Plains of Abraham - 1760 final French surrender.
  
  

1763 Treaty of Paris - transfers New France and Acadia to Great Britain

Royal Proclamation 1763:

• Creation of the colony of Quebec
• First formal document governing what was to become Canada
• Division between a predominantly French speaking population, farmers, clergy, seigneurs, and an English-speaking Government
  
  

1774 Quebec Act

• Formal recognition of the accommodation of French colonists and deal making between English and French Canada
• Practice of "elite accommodation"
• Concern about increasing crisis in the 13 colonies and the need to maintain the support in the Canada's
• Method support for the leaders of that community -- clergy and seigniors
• Official protection to the Catholic Church and Quebec Civil Law system
• Placed full authority of Quebec in the hands of the governor and an appointed Council. French Canadian elites could be appointed
  
  

1775 - American Revolutionary War and the arrival of loyalists

• founders of an English-speaking society that originated in its rejection of the new American republic
• demographic growth of English Canada in Ontario and the Maritimes
  
  

1784 - British North America is reorganized; New Brunswick separated from Nova Scotia.


1791 Constitutional Act

• Response to demands from loyalists
• upper and lower Canada separated
  • each with a governor and an appointed executive council, an appointed legislative council and a locally elected assembly.
• accepted the general ethnic line of division
• Canada a curious constitutional melange: Newfoundland a crown colony; PEI, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, royal provinces with single elective assemblies; Cape Breton with an appointed government; Upper and Lower Canada as established by the Canada Act; Rupert's Land under a charter company; Far northwest to the Pacific and Arctic oceans claimed by Britain but without any local constitution or any defined southern boundary.

1793 - Alexander Mackenzie of the North West Company reaches the Pacific Ocean overland.

War of 1812

• a small war by European standards, but definitive in North America
• if French and English-speaking nationalism in the Canadas and pro-British loyalties in the Maritimes had differing aspects they held in common an appreciation of the benefits and security of British power and institutions and deep distrust of American republicanism.
  
  

1816 - Metis and Selkirk settlers clash at the Battle of Seven Oaks

1821 - Hudson's By Company and North West Company merge.

1837 - Rebellion in Upper and Lower Canada

• Defeat of the political liberal and consolidated the dominance of conservative elitism
• A further uprising in Lower Canada in 1838 brutally suppressed
• The governor administered the province in association with the principal office holder -- also English appointees and some colonial appointees -- with prominent merchants they comprised the council or councils
  • The result was oligarchy referred to as the Family compact (Upper Canada), Chateau Clique (Lower Canada), the system (Nova Scotia), the cabal (PEI).
  • Elected assembly had little role - no control of revenue or finances and no involvement in administration consequently, conflict grew between the councils and the assemblies
• Part of the reason for failure was that there was little relationship between reform leadership, operating within the elite system even while trying to change it, and popular opinion responding to the collapse of the international wheat market.
  

1839 Durham Report

• Responsible government
  • division of powers between local and imperial authorities
  • local affairs would be determined by local authorities where the executive branch would govern only as long as it retained the confidence of the assembly.
  • matters of imperial concern would fall to the governor as an agent of the Crown.
• Assimilation:
  • Durham concluded that the loyalists of the English-speaking minority in Lower Canada rightly held the imperial government guilty of too greatly appeasing the French Canadians.
  • Arguing that government could not be entrusted to the backward French he called for a union of Upper and Lower Canada
    

1840-1 Act of Union

• amalgamation of Upper and Lower Canada
• Canada East and Canada West enjoyed equal representation
• emergence of a powerful coalition of moderate French-Canadian reformers (Lafontaine) and Canada west reformers (Baldwin)

1843 - Victoria established on Vancouver Island

1858 - BC embodied as a colony

1864 Charlottetown Conference

1864 Quebec Conference

• debate that the best interests and prosperity of British North America would be promoted by a federal union under the Crown of Great Britain.
• resolutions spelled out the division of power, financial arrangements and structure of government that were to become the basis of the BNA Act
  
  

1867 - BNA Act

• an attempt to avoid the weaknesses of the American federal system
  • retention of the Cabinet system of governance and residual powers given to the central government
  • stress central authority.
• The Westminister tradition
  • Canada would have a parliament like that of Great Britain
    • parliamentary supremacy
    • cabinet government
    • majority government
• Principles of the Canadian Constitution
  • - responsible government
    • executive is responsible to Parliament
  • federalism
    • division of powers, but centralized
    • residual powers fall to the centre not the provinces
  • judicial review - ameliorates the supremacy of Parliament
    • flows out of federalism
    • Court rule on the division of power
  • constitutional monarchy
  • rule of law
  • democracy - but a limited one.
    
    

1869 - Resistance to Canada led by Louis Riel in Red River

• One of the first legislative acts was resolutions calling for transcontinental expansion which gave little consideration to the peoples already inhabiting those areas. The result was rising suspicion and protest
• creation of a provisional government, execution Thomas Scott, and in 1870 the Manitoba Act and Wolseley Expedition.
• 1884 Riel returns to Canada - Battoche - 1885 second resistence Riel is executed
  
  

1871 - B.C. enters Confederation

1873 - PEI enters Confederation

1870 and 1871 Dominion Notes Act and Bank Act respectively

1885 - Trans-Canada rail line completed

1890 - Manitoba abolishes public funding for Catholic schools

• culmination of tense agitation on the question of race
• suppression of Northwest Rebellion taken as a symbol of the Anglo-Saxon dominance in the west
• the Act nullified the minority guarantees of the 1870 Manitoba Act.
• JCPC found that in this case the Federal government did have the right to intervene - protection of minority rights
• Compromise by Laurier and Manitoba's premier Greenway provided for limited French teaching wherever there were more than ten French-speaking students and for after-class religious instruction
• 1916 Manitoba eliminated bilingual schools entirely
  • in Ontario regulation 17 sharply restricted the use of French in the public school system
    
    

1905 - Saskatchewan and Alberta are created out of Northwest Territories

1914 - Canada and Newfoundland enter the WWI

• Canadian government determines the extent to its commitments
• demanded a role in the Imperial War Cabinet
• given a chair at the Paris Peace Conference and as an individual member in the League of Nations
  
  

1917 - Conscription Crisis

1917-18 Women given federal vote (if they had male relatives serving in the forces)

1919 - Winnipeg General Strike and the Red Scare

• rising concern about the relationship between big business and government
• union membership had doubled during the war
  • concern that employers would beat down labour demands for shorter hours, collective bargaining, higher wages, and a system of social insurances by using the returning soldiers as a threat
• series of strikes in 1919
• wartime censorship and repressive legislation were continued
• general strike in Winnipeg portrayed as led by Bolsheviks and communist agitators
• federal government prepared for intervention and anti-strike action directed by the provincial government
• In the following Manitoba elections four socialist leaders won provincial seats while still serving jail terms.
• 1921 federal election J.S. Woodsworth won Winnipeg for the Manitoba Independent Labour Party - the first socialist member of the House of Commons
  
  
  

1919 First Congress of the League of Indians meets in Sault Ste Marie

• objectives to claim and protect the rights of all Indians by legitimate and just means
• to reassert absolute control in retaining possession or disposition of aboriginal lands
• response to the assimilationist policy of Canadian state - in 1920 the government asserted that assimilation was the only possible policy - "Our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada."

1921 - Agnes Macphail elected to the House of Commons

1926 - King -Byng affair

• Mackenzie-King asked for dissolution of his Liberal Minority government
• Byng refused and called for the Conservative Arthur Meighan to form a government. The Conservatives held the largest number of seats in coalition with the Progressives
• Progressives withdraw support from the Conservatives Meighan government falls and there is an election
• Liberal Party campaigns on the platform that the Governor General was playing favorites by selecting the Conservatives and this was undue British intervention in the Canadian Parliament
• Liberal victory demonstrated that while the GG might have the technical power over the dissolution of Parliament it is the people who are the final arbiters of whether the action is appropriate.
  
  

1930 Great Depression

• by 1921 half the population was classed as urban. 1931 - 54%, 1968 more than 70%. Less than 15% of the labour force is now engaged in farming.
• Canada very vulnerable because of its dependence on foreign trade. Aggravating the impact was the unequal experience across regions and classes
  • urban middle-class less severely hit than working class which bore the brunt of lower wages and unemployment
  • devastated the economies of the Prairies and Maritimes
    

1931 - Government arrests and imprisons eight leaders of the Communist party

• sought to organize popular discontent among the unemployed
• Charged with being members of an international conspiracy and advocating revolution
  
  

1931 Statute of Westminister

• confirmed that Canadian legislation could not be disallowed by British Cabinet
• no act of British Parliament could be extended to a Dominion unless the latter requested and consented.
• Canada now independent from Britain except...
  • continued to share Head of State
  • amendments to the BNA Act still needed to be passed by British Parliament. 1949 compromise struck, but not until 1982 was full power granted to Canadian state.
  • JCPC remained the Court of Final Appeal - until 1933 for general cases, 1949 for constitutional

1932 - founding of CCF -Cooperative Commonwealth Association

• acceptance of the party system by an emerging socialist farmer-labour group.
•  pressure government to go further with social legislation
  • advocated nationalization of all industry essential to social planning, universal welfare measures (medical, unemployment insurance, pensions)
    
    

1935 - On-to-Ottawa Trek

• organized partly by the CP though the Workers' Unity League
• ensuing riot reduced center of Regina to shambles and put 120 in jail.
• illustrated how much of violence of this period was the result of confrontations between organized labour and the authorities.
  
  
  
  

1939 - Canada declares war on Germany

• symbolic of the autonomy from Great Britain
• further conscription crisis.
  
  

1944 - Family Allowances Act and National Housing Act are passed.

• Canada's first social insurance program with universal coverage
• legislation to deal with the threat of the CCF
  • also to prevent possible public disorder at the end of the war and to assert the authority of the federal government.
    
    

1948 - After referendum Newfoundland joins Confederation

1949 - Supreme Court of Canada becomes the final court of appeal

• response to the narrow review of BNA Act in response to Depression Era programs by the JCPC,, in moving it to the Supreme Court it was supposed to result in more centralized decisions.
  

1951 - Old Age Security Act is passed

1953 - Quebec's Tremblay Commission on Constitutional Problems makes its report.

• objective of government was the maintenance of economic stability and full employment
• commitment to Keynesian economics and carefully planned public works
  • entailed a considerable number of social security measures
    
    

1956

• CLC is formed from a merger of the Canadian Congress of Labour and the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada
• Unemployment Assistance Act is passed.
  
  

1960 - Parliament passes Bill of Rights

• guarantee of equality rights, but could be over-ridden by Parliament
  
  

1660 - Jean Lesage and the Liberals win in Quebec.

• changing nature of Quebec society
• end to the conservatism of the past and the Duplessis Regime
  

1961 - National Indian Council is founded

• to promote unity among Indian people, the betterment of people of Indian ancestry in Canada, and to create a better understanding of Indian and non-Indian relationships
  
  

1961 - Canadian content for TV is introduced

1961 - NDP is formed.

1964 - New Canadian Flag adopted

1965 - SUPA (Students' Union for Peace Action) is founded

• indication of Canadian youth sub-culture and the politics of the 1960s
  

1965 - National Pension Plan is introduced with a separate plan for Quebec

1966 - Federal Medical Care Act passed

• Union Nationale defeated by Quebec Liberals
  
  

1967 - Canadian Centennial year with new national anthem

1967 - Royal Commission on the Status of Women

• result of failure of government to listen to the Committee on Equality for Women which organized in 1966 to lobby government.
• threat of a whole-scale women's march to Ottawa
• The Commission tabled a report making recommendations based on four areas
  • the right of women to choose to be employed outside the home
  • the obligation of parents and society to care for children
  • the special responsibilities of society to women because of maternity
  • the need for positive action to overcome entrenched patterns of discrimination
• recommendations outlined an agenda that still drives Canadian mainstream feminism.
  

1968 - formation of Metis Society and the National Indian Brotherhood

1968 - Date identified with the Quiet Revolution in Quebec

• manifestation of Quebec's changing attitude towards Confederation
  

1969

• Criminal Code amendments dealing with abortion and homosexuality
• Sir George Williams Computer Centre is occupied
• White Paper on Indian affairs
  • Controversial recommendations - the abolition of the Indian Act, transfer of Indian lands from Crown trust into the hands of aboriginal peoples, devolution of responsibility for aboriginal peoples to the provinces.
• Official languages Act
  

1970 - October Crisis

• After a series of bombings centered in English Montreal, two terrorist cells of the FLQ kidnapped a British diplomat (trade commissioner James Cross) and a Quebec cabinet minister (Pierre Laporte) who was eventually murdered.
• 16 October Ottawa proclaimed the War measures Act giving unlimited powers to the government. The result was arrest and detention without charge of hundreds of Quebec residents not all of them francophone but the majority.

1971 - New federal Unemployment Insurance Plan

1973 - Energy Crisis and the New Energy Policy

• oil and resource management became the subjects of tension between some provinces and the federal government
• indicated the emergence of rich provinces outside of the central core and a provincial push to dismantle Ottawa's centralized arrangements
  
  

1974 - Wage and price controls

• Supreme Court responds ruling on the ability of the Federal government to invoke POGG
  

1976 - Parti Quebecois wins power

1977 - Bill 101

1978 - Task Force on National Unity

1980 - Quebec referendum - 60 NON, 40 Oui

1981 - Supreme Court rules on federal Constitutional initiative

1982

• Repatriation of the Constitution
• Charter of Rights and Freedom and Judicial Review.
  

1986 - free trade

1987

• Meech Lake
• Formation of reform party
  

1988 - the Free Trade Election

1989 - Marc Lapine shoots 14 female engineering students in Montreal

1990 - Meech Lake fails.

1990- Oka

• dispute over a golf course and aboriginal title and ancestral land
  

1990 - Audrey McLaughlin chosen first female party leader in Canada

1992 - Charlottetown Accord and referendum

1992 - The biggest electoral debacle in Canadian history

• Tories reduced to two seats.
• BQ forms the opposition
• Reform the next largest party.
  

1995 - October 30 - Quebec Referendum II

2001 - Quebec City Protests and Free Trade of the Americas