June 23, 1990
Defeat of Meech Lake Accord
Urgent Need to Modernize Canada’s Constitution
The Meech Lake Accord has significance in the telling of Canada’s constitutional history because it was yet another attempt to amend Canada’s Constitution behind closed doors and this attempt was defeated when it did not get the consensus required according to the amending formula incorporated into the Constitution when it was patriated in 1982. Thus, June 23, 1990, as the day the Accord was defeated, has gone down in Canadian history.
Whatever explanations are given for its defeat, the facts are that it was unacceptable because it sought to perpetuate the situation in which the people are deprived of political power, it denied the right of the nation of Quebec to self-determination and it continued the subjugation of the Indigenous Peoples to the rule of the Crown. Furthermore, citizenship rights continued to be privileges which the Crown gets to give and take away and under the guise of English and French being recognized as official languages, the people are said to uphold values and superior cultures to which all Canada’s national minorities must take a back seat.
The Accord was a set of amendments to the Constitution of Canada negotiated behind closed doors in 1987 by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and the provincial premiers. The failure of the Meech Lake Accord marked a deepening of the constitutional crisis which has now become an existential crisis due to Canada’s all-sided integration into the U.S. war economy and state arrangements and the use of prerogative powers to not only increase the so-called reasonable limits on civil rights in the name of security and stability but also remove the limits on the use of prerogative powers of the prime minister and premiers and other ministers also in the name of security and stability and their self-serving definitions of national interest. Such definitions accord with those of the Pentagon and NATO while the Canadian people play no role whatsoever in taking the decisions on matters which affect their lives.
The Meech Lake Accord was signed as a result of the crisis which accompanied the 1980 Quebec Referendum on the place of Quebec within Canada and Quebec’s refusal to sign on to the Pierre Elliott Trudeau government’s “patriated” Constitution of 1982. Trudeau had promised that he would draft a new constitutional agreement after the 1980 Quebec referendum was defeated. His promise was realized in the form of the addition of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and an amending formula to the British North America Act of 1867 (BNA Act 1867), an act of the British Imperial Parliament, which is called the Constitution of Canada. With Pierre Trudeau’s addition, the BNA Act 1867 became Canada’s Constitution Act 1982. It was the “Canadian equivalent” of Britain’s Canada Act passed by the British Parliament on March 29, 1982. On this basis, it was claimed that the Constitution was “patriated.”
While the claim is made that this ended Canada’s formal dependence on Britain, the fact is that the Queen of England remained Canada’s Head of State — now succeeded by Charles III. Most importantly, to this day, Canadians have never adopted a constitution of their own, enshrining what they would consider to be the principles guiding Canada in the 21st century. In other words, the Constitution of Canada does not vest sovereignty in the people of Canada in any way, shape or form. It is in urgent need of renewal because the present constitutional order permits representatives of the rich and powerful to set Canada on a nation-wrecking war path which Canadians do not want.
Canada’s Constitution Act 1982 includes an amending formula as well as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Besides not vesting sovereignty in the people, which means it did not enshrine the modern conception of equality or the rights and duties of citizens on a modern basis, it also failed to establish nation-to-nation relations with the Indigenous Peoples and to recognize Quebec’s right to self-determination. Failure to recognize Quebec’s right to self-determination is why Quebec refused to sign it. This created a constitutional crisis which the Mulroney government attempted to resolve by commencing constitutional negotiations in 1985. These negotiations culminated with the Meech Lake Accord two years later.
Quebec Premier Robert Bourassa had said the Constitution needed five modifications for Quebec to sign. On that basis, the following changes were laid out in the Accord: it declared Quebec a “distinct society” within Canada; gave Quebec a constitutional veto; increased provincial powers with respect to immigration; extended and regulated the right to reasonable financial compensation for any province that opted out of any future federal programs in areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction; and provided for provincial input in appointing senators and Supreme Court judges.
In this way, instead of modernizing the Constitution in a manner that favours the people, the Meech Lake Accord sought to maintain the status quo as concerns the substantive matters of principle.
Demonstration against Meech Lake Accord outside the Manitoba Legislature, June 21, 1990.
Because the Meech Lake Accord would have changed the Constitution, according to the Amending Formula, the changes — especially those which modified the Supreme Court — required the consent of all provincial and federal legislatures within three years. The 10 provincial premiers soon agreed but, as the three-year deadline for consent of all legislatures drew near, the consensus began to unravel. To try to save Meech, a First Ministers’ Conference was held 20 days before the signing deadline, resulting in an agreement for further rounds of constitutional negotiations. During that conference, Newfoundland Premier Clyde Wells attacked the secrecy of the whole process of decision-making. On June 23, 1990, the deadline date, Elijah Harper, a First Nations member of the Manitoba Legislature, to his eternal credit signalled his refusal to give approval by holding up an eagle feather. This blocked the motion required for the Manitoba Legislature to vote on the Accord and get unanimous consent. Premier Wells then cancelled a proposed vote in the Newfoundland Legislature and the Meech Lake Accord was officially dead.
A main feature of the Meech Lake Accord was its failure to clarify what was meant by “distinct society” when referring to Quebec. When it stated that Quebec was a “distinct society” it also declared that the role of the legislature and government of Quebec was to “preserve and promote the distinct identity of Quebec.” The term “distinct society” remained undefined in the documents and the “distinct” features of Quebec were not enumerated, nor were any guidelines given by which these features could be preserved and promoted.
“Distinct society” was subject to many interpretations, but the predominant one that emerged was the old fiction that Quebec was distinct simply because the people speak French. By making language the only issue, the Meech formulation of a “distinct society” denied that the Quebec people comprise a nation that has historically evolved with a common economy and territory, language, culture and psychology that have the imprint of this development. Further, it denied the Quebec people the right to self-determination up to and including secession if they so decide. Telling the Quebec Legislature what it has to do also did not go over well, to say the least.
Another significant feature of the Meech Lake Accord was its overall promotion of national disunity and inequality. Defining a nation by language alone not only promotes two official languages and cultures as superior but it co-habits with the theory that Canada is populated by a large number of different “ethno-linguistic nations,” all of which should or could supposedly have independent status, but only two of them — the “English” and “French” — are given pride of place.
The Meech Lake Accord also created disunity by devolving federal powers to the provinces, suggesting the existence of 10 small nations (the provinces) and one big one, the federal government. The two territories (Nunavut did not yet exist) were not invited to Meech (they participated by video conference) because Mulroney considered they had insufficient power to affect any decisions. This was understood to mean that the regions of Canada each had different status. Meech also gave each province a veto to block legislation and it was clear that each province would use its veto to promote narrow interests of its own regional and foreign economic and political power-brokers rather than to advance an overall national interest or aim.
A third main feature of the Meech Lake Accord was its failure to affirm or even address the hereditary rights of the Indigenous Peoples, which amounted to giving the colonial suppression of those rights a green light. The rights of the Indigenous Peoples are not a peripheral issue but should be enshrined in the Constitution of Canada on a modern basis, beyond the incorporation of the Royal Proclamation of 1763. Hereditary and treaty rights are between nations whereas to this day, the British Crown treats the Indigenous Peoples as wards of the state and their territories as possessions over which its decisions are final.
The Royal Proclamation was issued by King George III to officially claim British territory in North America after Britain won the Seven Years War. It sets out that only the Crown can buy land from First Nations.
Indigenous Peoples have a rightful claim to the territories of their ancestors and to the determination of what can and must be done with them. As sovereign peoples they have the right to determine not only their affairs but to participate in determining the affairs of Canada as a whole because their destiny and that of the people of the country called Canada and Quebec are intertwined.
The proposed modifications to the Constitution in the Meech Lake Accord did not deal with any of this. Indigenous leaders also raised two other issues. One was their exclusion from the entire Meech proceedings. The other was the potential transfer of federal services to the provinces implied by the clause calling for compensation to provinces for opting out of federal programs. This directly affects programs crucial to the well-being of the Indigenous Peoples which the Crown is duty-bound to honour because is stole Native Land and committed cultural genocide against the Indigenous Peoples. It is a matter of principle that they be able to exercise control over all decisions which affect their lives.
A fourth main feature of the Meech Lake Accord was the anti-democratic nature of the proceedings. When all consultations were held behind the backs of the people, they were said to be 11 white men in suits dealing with the future of the country behind closed doors. Once the Meech agreement was reached in secret, the 11 First Ministers tried to impose it on the people without any discussion or deliberation. There was no broad consultation involving the people at any time, the agenda was not set according to what the people wanted, and the items discussed and included in the Accord were only those that the First Ministers wanted on behalf of the narrow private interests they were sworn to serve and protect.
The people’s displeasure with the Meech proceedings was captured by the 1990 Citizens’ Forum on Canada’s Future, commonly referred to as the Spicer Commission. Prime Minister Mulroney was forced to convene it just after Meech was defeated because people from coast to coast to coast demanded a say. Mulroney used this to claim that his government wanted to hear the opinions of Canadians. The Spicer Commission published its findings in 1991 with many Canadians and the people of Quebec expressing their acute awareness that something was lacking in the Canadian political process to make it democratic, that politicians were not to be trusted, and that mechanisms were required to empower the people. Many called for the formation of a constituent assembly which would enable the people to deliberate and decide on their own constitution.
All of the proposals and recommendations of the Spicer Commission were subsequently ignored by the Government of Canada.
The failure of the Meech Lake Accord also led to the eventual demise of the parliamentary configuration of the Liberal and Conservative “party-in-power” and “party-in-opposition,” with the virtual decimation of the Conservatives in 1993. This was followed by the sorry state of the Liberals as a result of the “sponsorship scandal” following the 1995 referendum in Quebec, which concentrated more and more power in fewer and fewer hands. Since then, the political parties with seats in the House of Commons have formed a mafia-like cartel to keep the people disempowered. What are called political parties are all about getting elected on the basis of maintaining data bases to micro-target voters while the divide between those who govern and those who are governed widens with each passing day.
In this respect, the Meech Lake Accord confirmed that a form of political power has emerged in Canada with the supreme decision-making power usurped by supranational narrow private interests. Those who call themselves the people’s political representatives in fact act in the service of the cartels and coalitions of oligopolies which have usurped the decision-making power and run rampant internationally causing trouble everywhere they go. The suggestion that the Prime Minister and the 10 provincial premiers should be the only ones to propose Constitutional amendments, and that the people should be excluded from the process has been resoundingly rejected many times over because the times demand that the supreme decision-making power be transferred to the people speaking in their own name and acting in their own interests.
The significance of the Meech Lake Accord today is that in this era the people want to be the arbiters and decision-makers. It is the work for democratic renewal which will open society’s path to progress. Reordering the status quo in the name of change, modernization or making every vote count have been shown to be self-serving and not an option.
Today no government has the consent of the governed. The demands for democratic renewal and to Make Canada a Zone for Peace are more urgent than ever.
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