Queen's Privy Council For Canada - History

History

The Queen's Privy Council has assembled in the presence of the sovereign on two occasions: First, at 10:00 am on Thanksgiving Monday of 1957, at the monarch's residence in Ottawa, Rideau Hall. There, Queen Elizabeth II chaired a meeting of 22 of her privy councilors— including her consort, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whom Elizabeth appointed to the QPC at that conference— and therein approved an Order in Council. Two years later, the QPC again met before the Queen in Halifax to confirm the appointment of Georges Vanier as governor general. There was originally some speculation that the coming together of the sovereign and her council was not constitutionally sound; however, the prime minister at the time, John Diefenbaker, found no legal impropriety in the idea, and desired to create a physical illustration of Elizabeth's position of Queen of Canada being separate to that of Queen of the United Kingdom.

The last formal meeting of the Privy Council was held in 1981 to give formal consent to the marriage of the Prince of Wales to the Lady Diana Spencer. According to a contemporary newspaper account, the 27 March conference at Government House consisted of 12 individuals, including Chief Justice Bora Laskin, who presided over the meeting, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, several cabinet ministers, Stanley Knowles of the New Democratic Party, and Alvin Hamilton of the Progressive Conservative Party. There, all gathered were informed of the Prince's engagement, nodded their approval, and then toasted their decision with champagne. David Brown, an official in the machinery of government section of the Privy Council Office, told The Globe and Mail that, had the Privy Council rejected the Prince of Wales' engagement, none of his children would have been considered legitimate heirs to the Canadian throne, thus setting up a potential break in the unified link to the Crown throughout the Commonwealth realms, in contradiction to the conventional "treaty" laid out in the preamble to the 1931 Statute of Westminster. Following the announcement of the Prince of Wales' engagement to Camilla Parker-Bowles, however, the Department of Justice announced its decision that the Privy Council was not required to meet to give its consent to the marriage, as the union would not result in offspring that would impact the succession to the throne.