Constitutional History of Canada - Constitutional Act (1791)

Constitutional Act (1791)

On June 10, 1791, the Constitutional Act was enacted in London and gave Canada its first parliamentary constitution. Containing 50 articles, the act brought the following changes:

• The Province of Quebec was divided into two distinct provinces, Province of Lower Canada (present-day Quebec) and Province of Upper Canada (present-day Ontario).
• Each province was given an elected Legislative Assembly, an appointed Legislative Council, and an appointed Executive Council.
• Upper Canada was to be administered by a lieutenant governor appointed by the governor general, while Lower Canada was to be administered by a direct representative of the governor general.
• The Legislative Councils were to be established with no fewer than seven members in Upper Canada and fifteen members in Lower Canada. The members were to hold their seat for life.
• The Legislative Assembly was to be established with no less than sixteen members in Upper Canada and fifty members in Lower Canada.
• The governor was given the power to appoint the speaker of the Legislative Assembly, to fix the time and place of the elections and to give or withhold assent to bills.
• Provisions were made to allot clergy reserves to the Protestant churches in each province.

This partition ensured that Loyalists would constitute a majority in Upper Canada and allow for the application of exclusively British laws in this province. As soon as the province was divided, a series of acts were passed to abolish the French civil code in Upper Canada. In Lower Canada, the coexistence of French civil law and English criminal law continued.

Although it solved the immediate problems related to the settlement of the Loyalists in Canada, the new constitution brought a whole new set of political problems which were rooted in the constitution. Some of these problems were common to both provinces, while others were unique to Lower Canada or Upper Canada. The problems that eventually affected both provinces were:

• The Legislative Assemblies did not have full control over the revenues of the provinces
• The Executive and Legislative Councils were not responsible to the Legislative Assembly

In the two provinces, a movement for constitutional reform took shape within the majority party, the Parti canadien of Lower Canada and the Reformers of Upper Canada. Leader of the Parti Canadien, Pierre-Stanislas Bédard was the first politician of Lower Canada to formulate a project of reform to put an end to the opposition between the elected Legislative Assembly and the Governor and his Council which answered only the Colonial Office in London. Putting forward the idea of ministerial responsibility, he proposed that the members of the Legislative Council be appointed by the Governor on the recommendation of the elected House.