Politics and Constitutional Reform in Canada: A Study in Political Opposition

Abstract

Political opposition in a federal system is particularly rich and complex, involving not only political parties and pressure groups, but constitutionally sovereign governments as well. This article examines political opposition in a federation through a case study of the mobilization of opposition to the Canadian Constitution Act. Introduced by the federal government in 1980, the Act proposed a series of important changes in the powers of Canada's ten provinces. The resistance offered by a number of provinces, the two opposition parties holding seats in Parliament, and a handful of interest groups were sufficient to secure significant changes in the Act. The analysis presented here demonstrates the key role of provincial governments-and especially of provincial premiers-as oppositional actors, while indicating the importance of the courts and intergovernmental conferences as sites where political opposition expresses itself in a federation. In 1955, Frank Underhill looked back on twenty years of Liberal dominance of Canadian national politics and concluded that the real alternative to the Grits was not to be found in the Progressive Conservatives, the official opposition in Ottawa, but among the few provinces whose citizens had elected non-Liberal governments.' Underhill's observation contains two important insights about political opposition in Canada. First, opposition can, and sometimes must, extend beyond the walls of Parliament. Second, it implies that a federal constitution establishes a basis for an oppositional tension between the national and regional governments created by it. This tension does not have to exist. Underhill claimed to find it only between the Liberal government in Ottawa and the provinces in which other parties held power; but it certainly can exist, and will exist, whenever a provincial ministry feels its goals frustrated by the actions of the national government.2 The political history of Canada since 1960 amply testifies to the oppositional potential of provincial governments, a potential that was most obviously set in motion during the several attempts to secure an amending formula for