252nd Anniversary of Coercive Quebec Act
June 22, 1774

The Modern Need to Vest Sovereignty in the People

June 22 marks the anniversary of the proclamation of the Quebec Act 1774 whose official title is the Act for making more effectual Provision for the Government of the Province of Quebec in North America. It was one of a series of “Coercive Acts” passed by the British parliament between 1773 and 1775. The revolutionaries in the 13 Colonies called them “Intolerable Acts,” adopted as punishment for the “Boston Tea Party” and to consolidate the British domination of North America. Fearing that the Canadiens would join the American revolutionaries, among other things the Act removed the obligation of the Canadiens to swear an oath of allegiance to the Protestant faith, guaranteed the practice of Catholicism and restored tithes to the Catholic Church. Given these measures, it is clear that the aim of the Act was to assuage the Canadiens who the British had brutally conquered and deprived of all rights.

The Quebec Act 1774 replaced the Royal Proclamation of 1763 issued by George III on October 7, 1763 which established the basis for governing the North American territories surrendered by France to Britain in the Treaty of Paris, 1973 which brought the Seven Years’ War to an end and handed over New France to Britain. Its aim was to replace failed policies intended to assimilate the Canadiens to British rule. The Royal Proclamation also set the constitutional structure for the negotiation of treaties with the Indigenous Peoples which continue to be referenced in section 25 of Canada’s Constitution Act, 1982.

Writing about how the British went about imposing the structures of the British system of rule in their dominions in what became known as British North America, in the book A Future to Face, Hardial Bains points out:

“[…] The Royal Proclamation of October 7, 1763 had placed the political power in the hands of an Executive consisting of a Governor and Council appointed by the ruling authority, the Colonial Office in London. It was a direct rule under the sovereign authority of the British King as advised by the 18th century Parliament. The proclamation included a provision for a popular assembly ‘as soon as… circumstances admit.’

“The Quebec Act of 1774 permitted a limited sharing of restricted power with those in the appointed council which was increased in size from 12 to 23 and General Carleton, the Governor, appointed from them a ‘Board of Council’ of five members – a ‘privy council.’ According to Edmund Burke, an open champion of established institutions and oligarchic rule, the introduction of French civil law, the old civil code of feudal France, church titles and the seigneurial system and the appointment of noblesse onto the Council meant:

“This appointment of the Quebec noblesse into the ruling council in 1774 shortly after military occupation was the beginning of using the noblesse to preserve and extend the power established in 1763. […]”[1]

Referring to these events, Prof. W.P.M. Kennedy, in his book The Constitution of Canada (1922), writes:

“Canada was to be a military base, held quiet by an endowed church, a vast hinterland, a satisfied noblesse, a recognized priesthood, French civil law, and a disciplined and obedient population.”[2]

Governor General Carleton was not able to secure the obedience of the populace through these measures and through his letters he expressed the fear of insurrection and that the gentry and clergy had failed “to retain their infatuated countrymen.” In anger and frustration, he called them “a wretched people blind to honour.” He condemned them as “the most ungrateful race under the sun.” He had hoped that the granting of seats on the council and the use of their language, French civil law and religion would make the gentry and clergy powerful enough to get the populace to support the British Crown in crushing the seething rebellion in the British North American colonies. But the population of Quebec did not line up behind the British Crown. On the contrary, they sympathized with the rebellion in the 13 Colonies while maintaining their own right to an independent nation. General Carleton’s strategy had created a group of individuals in whose interest it was to defend the power on behalf of the Crown.

Kennedy observes that with the Quebec Act:

“[T]he loyalty of the French-Canadian church and upper classes was secured and proved a powerful influence against disintegration. Not only in the American Revolution, but in the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Wars, in 1812, and in the rebellions of 1837, the church and upper classes in Quebec set their faces like flint against organized and dismembering nation.”[3]

The Quebec Act was repealed with the introduction of the Constitutional Act, 1791. This Act divided Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada and the legislative authority was vested in the Governor or Lieutenant-Governor acting with the advice of the legislative council and assembly in each of the two colonies. This advisory body, called the Legislative Council, was appointed by the Governor with seven appointees for Upper Canada and 19 for Lower Canada. The members were appointed for life. The speaker was also appointed and removed by the Governor. Along with the Legislative Council, the Crown introduced a form of electoral process with the division of the colonies into electoral districts for the purpose of electing 16 members to an assembly in Upper Canada and 50 to a similar assembly for Lower Canada, with the proviso that the electors and those elected be men of means. These assemblies met once a year for a period of four years and could be dismissed by the Governor. A bill passed in both the Legislative Assembly and the appointed Legislative Council could be accepted or rejected by the Governor or he could leave the matter to the Crown to decide. Any bill assented by the Governor could be overruled by the British government within two years. The Governor and Executive Council constituted the Court of Appeal, with the right to appeal to the British Privy Council in London as final arbiter.

Today, the elites who have usurped the power of the state in Quebec proudly uphold the Quebec Act 1774 as the origin of their attempts to impose a new constitution on the people of Quebec. Some even proudly say that the precedent for Bill 21, the Act respecting the laicity of the State, adopted by the Quebec National Assembly in 2019, lies in the original Constitution imposed by the British in 1774 in the form of the Quebec Act. It brings them no honour since these were examples of the imposition by the British of their policy of divide and rule in which the oligarchs, not the people defined rights, with the main intention of depriving the people of their own political power.

On June 7, 2024, then Premier Quebec Premier François Legault announced the creation of the Committee on Constitutional Issues which was charged with “strengthening Quebec’s autonomy, preserving its rights and obtaining more powers in fundamental areas, such as immigration.” Citing Bill 21 along with Bill 96 – which consolidates the status of French as the common and official language of Quebec and the affirmation of Quebec’s rights through the use of the notwithstanding clause in the Canadian Constitution – he declared that they constitute “gains” and a strengthening of Quebec’s “constitutional foundations.”

The practice of deal-making between the ruling elites of Canada can never lead to a modern Quebec Constitution as it is claimed. It is part of the archaic power-sharing arrangements set by the British colonialists to consolidate their domination of their colonies, not to emancipate them.

When decisions are taken by the ruling elites and the interests of the people are left out of the equation the results are never good. Whether we speak of the Treaty of Paris 1763, or the Quebec Act of 1774 to 1791, 1841 to 48, 1867, 1930 or 1982 up to the present day, all the decisions were imposed from above. The suppression of the people in one form or another have ever been the starting point for the drawing up of these proclamations and agreements.

Notes

1. A Future to Face, Hardial Bains, Committee to Vote No, October 26, 1992.

2. The Constitution of Canada, W.P.M. Kennedy, Oxford University Press, 1922.

3. Ibid.