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The Constitution of Canada is the supreme law in Canada. It is an amalgam of codified acts and uncodified traditions and conventions. It outlines Canada's system of government, as well as the civil rights of all Canadian citizens. Generally speaking, all British legislation that predates or modifies the British North America Act comprise the Constitution of Canada.
The Constitution, as it is generally known, is made up of many parts (see the list below), the most significant that are most often cited today are:
Since 1982 the Charter has become the most often cited portion of the Constitution. The predecessor acts and orders that are listed below are generally not as well known. These acts have sometimes been denounced as "messy," "almost incoherent" or worse for their somewhat convoluted form and long, unconsolidated history. However, they remain the laws that determine the division of powers between federal and provincial jurisdictions, the terms upon which new provinces entered Canada and the division between executive, legislative and judicial areas of power in a manner very different from the United States.
Much of how Canada's government works cannot be accurately learned from a simple reading of the constitution. Like the British government, the Canadian government is heavily dependent on unwritten constitutional conventions. For example, a literal reading of the constitution would seem to indicate that Canada is an authoritarian nation run almost single-handedly by a dictatorial Governor General. This is not the case, of course. The Governor General is for the most part a figurehead, and the true power rests in the Prime Minister, though the latter office was not even mentioned in the Constitution until 1983, and even then was only done in passing.
At the same time, Canada relies on constitutional convention to a much smaller degree than the United Kingdom, and there are parts of the Constitution of Canada (namely the portions that deal with civil rights and provincial-federal relations) in which a literal reading of the constitutional documents closely resembles actual practice.
Modifying the constitution of Canada used to be done by a single majority vote in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom or "Imperial Parliament". Since the repatriation of the constitution in 1983, however, amendments can only be passed by the House, Senate, and a two-thirds majority of the provinces. Though not constitutionally mandated, a popular referendum in every province is also considered to be necessary by many, especially following the precedent established by the Charlottetown Accord (see below).
If a constitutional amendment only affects one province, however, only the assent of that province's legislature is required. Six of the nine amendments passed so far have been of this nature, with four passed by and for Newfoundland, one passed for New Brunswick, one for Prince Edward Island, and one for Quebec.
There are some parts of the constitution that can only be modified by a unanimous vote of all the provinces, however. This includes changing the Supreme Court of Canada in any way, changing the process for amending the constitution itself, or abolishing the Monarchy in Canada. The latter regulation was included largely to appease the pro-monarchist Premier of Newfoundland at the time.
Amending the Canadian Constitution is a topic of great debate in Canada. There seems to be general agreement among provincial governments that some parts of the Constitution need to be amended to deal with long-standing demands from many provinces. There are demands by western provinces for a greater share of power at the federal level, and demands from Quebec for greater protection for its status as distinct society. Quebec, in particular, has not formally signed the Constitution Act of 1982, although this is largely symbolic and does not affect the legal applicability of the Act.
Nevertheless, agreement on details of amendments has been elusive. Further complicating attempts to amend the Constitution is the complexity of the procedure for doing so, which in most cases requires approval from both the federal parliament and two-thirds of the provincial governments, and in some cases require the approval of all ten provincial governments.
The 1987 Meech Lake Accord, a package of constitutional amendments intended to deal with long-standing concerns of western provinces and demands from the province of Quebec, failed in 1990 when it was not ratified by the ten provincial governments. The last attempt at a comprehensive package of constitutional amendments was the Charlottetown Accord, which arose out of the failure of the Meech Lake Accord. The Charlottetown Accord was defeated in a national referendum in 1992.
There have been several relatively minor amendments to the Constitution since it was repatriated in 1982 including amendments dealing with provincial schooling in Newfoundland and Quebec and the changing the name of Newfoundland to Newfoundland and Labrador (see below).
The following is a list of pre-1982 British legislation, Orders-in-Council and Statutory Instruments of the United Kingdom that form, or formed, part of the Canadian Constitution:
As mentioned, amending the constitution has been a topic of much debate in contemporary Canada, and the two most comprehensive attempts to revise the document have both been defeated. There have, however, been nine minor amendments to the constitution since the Constitution was repatriated in 1983.
Most of these amendments have been limited in scope, dealing with only specific provinces, and thus not subject to national debate. None have been ratified by a national referendum.
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