The History of Canada Series: Three Weeks in Quebec City: The Meeting That Made Canada by Christopher Moore

Author:Christopher Moore [Moore, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Canada, General
ISBN: 9780143194507
Google: PoAVBgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penguin Canada
Published: 2015-05-04T23:00:00+00:00

The lieutenant-governor “shall be a very high officer,” said Macdonald, and once appointed could not be removed for five years, so that “he should not be removable by any new political party.” In effect, the resolution was confirming what McCully had said before the break: the provinces, like the federal government, would indeed be responsible governments, almost constitutional monarchies in miniature, with a governor as local head of government, but guided by advisors accountable to the elected legislature. Since the provinces could not interfere with the office of lieutenant-governor, a federal nominee, this resolution safeguarded the whole structure of responsible government in each province. The lieutenant-governor needed a cabinet, and the cabinet had to be responsible to the legislature, so the provinces’ freedom to amend their constitutions hardly went further than permitting them to tinker with constituency boundaries and voting procedures or to abolish their upper houses. Brown’s notion, if indeed he had proposed it, of directly elected cabinet members and legislatures that did not play a political role, had been very firmly knocked on the head. It was never mentioned again.

After the lieutenant-governor’s resolution was passed, Macdonald read out “his several proposed resolutions as to the powers of the federal and local governments.” That would be material for the next day’s debates—and for many decades afterwards.

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