Canadian Federalism, and the Foreign Affairs and Treaty Power. The Impact of Quebec’s “Quiet Revolution”

The succeeding discussion looks at some of the concrete record of governmental practice (whether provincial or federal) in Canada, under the impact of the “Quiet Revolution” in Quebec, in important areas of foreign affairs and trans-national cultural, social, and commercial relations generally. Its thesis will be, first, that at the level of constitutional law-in-action important changes and modifications are occurring in Canada which largely render out-of-date certain traditional a priori concepts and attitudes as to inter-governmental relations within a federal system; second, that these de facto changes, which are already ripening through sustained practice and observance into conventional constitutional law, tend to present the Privy Council’s work on the Canadian constitution and its interpretation in a new and rather more favourable light (in comparison perhaps with the record of the Canadian Supreme Court); and, third, that the constitutional changes that have, in fact, occurred in this area make good sense in pragmatic, experiential terms, having regard to the inner dynamics of Canadian federalism today and to the aspirations of the main contending power groups, the new positive law of the constitution thus coming very close to being also community “living law” in Canada.