Essay On Constitutional Amendment

The Constitution Act of 1982 transferred the authority to amend the Constitution from Great Britain to Canada. To date, Quebec’s constitutional concerns have not been addressed to a great enough extent, according to the government or the residence, to formally pass consent on the 1982 Constitution. This is largely due to the distinctiveness of the society of Quebec originating from the largely French speaking population, the resilient cultural identity, as well as history, political, and social traditions, that are more or less not shared with the rest of Canada The question in concern is whether or not Canada’s Constitution should recognize the francophone population in Quebec as a ‘nation’ with characteristics and needs palpably different from those of other provinces in the Canadian federation. The problem has been tackled on a number of occasions but has yet to be resolved. This paper serves to propose three potential amendment solutions to the constitutional problem of Quebec; these include the prospective bilateral constitutional amendment, … as well as simply rethinking the framework of Canada. The Constitutional issue of Quebec is of great importance due to the fact that the Constitution was imposed upon the citizens without their consent, and this begs the question of whether this is sufficient moral justification for the Quebecoise to acquire a new one. The problem at hand is that of linguistic duality within Canada. Heavy emphasis was placed in the Constitution on the agreement of political objectives and the role of a shared language and culture in Canadian society. Quebec wanted to remain Canadian, but with Canada recognizing more than one society within its boarders. There remains two basic goals of the Quebecoise within Canada; the formal recognition that Canada is a nation comprised of two distinct societies of French Canadian and English Canadian, and that the Quebec government should be afforded particular provisions due to the fact the province inhabits four-firths of the French speaking population of Canada. In order to change the Constitution in regards to Quebec, the province would have to follow the amending formula. The amending formula for the Canadian Constitution and the province of Quebec goes as follows: Section 43- Amendment of provisions relating to some but not all provinces- states that it would require the resolution of the senate, the House of Commons and the legislative assemblies of the provinces which the amendment applies. This reveals itself to be a reasonable obstacle to surmount in order to change the constitution to incorporate the desires of Quebec. Not all solutions however, involve constitutional amendment. This essay outlines two proposed solutions to issues of Quebec within the constitution the first being a bilateral constitutional amendment which thus would involve the amending formula, and the other being a simple recalibration of the mindset of Canadian multiculturalism. There have been a variety of proposed solutions by the Canadian government however, very little of them address the direct problem of conflicting diversity of cultures. The Meech Lake Accords were an example of an attempt to console the issues of Quebec through adhering to a national objective. The agreement would express the Canadian identity in constitutional form. This attempt however failed but the yearning for unity did not. Another example of an attempt to ratify the Quebecois discontent was the Charter of the French Language. It attempted to forget bonds at the national level between the two dominant language groups through promoting bilingualism within national institutions. In addition, The federal Parliament attempted in 1995 to pass a nation referendum recognizing the Quebecois as it’s own nation within Canada." Upon it’s failure, …show more content…
The Bilateral Constitutional Amendment remains a promising solution to the Quebecoise and their strong feelings of nationhood. Due to the amendment of the Constitution being so radical, the rethinking of Canada as a nation and the principal to which we stand on represent another solution to the problem. Quebec is a prominate issue due to the fact it is such a distinct society spate from Canada insofar as they have their own language, customs and culture. This does not however, eliminate prospects for revising the problem. Canada is built on the foundation of multiculturalism, tolerance, and unanimity which serves to prove that we as a nation can amend the constitutional issue of Quebec in a way in which best expresses the ideals all Canadian