NOTES
- Speaking of deconstructing the Canadian state is, in a very real sense, being playful with words. Certain contemporary critics, mostly critics of contemporary fiction, are bound not to be amused by this playfulness. They will point out that deconstruction does not mean “taking apart,” yet that is what they will accuse me of wishing to convey. We all know that Canada is in some danger of coming apart.
- For an account of the fiscal crisis facing Canada see D'Arcy Jenish, Money to Burn: Trudeau, Mulroney, and the Bankruptcy of Canada (Toronto: Stoddart, 1996).
- For two very different views and elaborations of this issue, see Frank Cassidy, “Aboriginal Land Claims in British Columbia,” in Ken Coates, ed., Aboriginal Land Claims in Canada: A Regional Perspective (Toronto: Copp Clark, 1992), 11–44, and Mel Smith, Our Home or Native Land (Victoria: Crown Western, 1995).
- For an extended argument in favor of the inevitability of growing regional sensibilities, see Gordon Gibson, Plan B: The Future of the Rest of Canada (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 1994) and Thirty Million Musketeers (Vancouver: Fraser Institute, 1995). Peter H. Russell's Constitutional Odyssey: Can Canadians Be A Sovereign People?, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995) provides a different perspective on regional necessity.
- A brief description of the Laurentian thesis can be found in J. M. S. Careless, “Frontierism, Metropolitanism and Canadian History,” in Carl Berger, ed., Approaches to Canadian History (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1968).
- See Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (New York: Routledge, 1990).
- For an elaboration of this sense of Canadian angst, see Richard Gwyn, Nationalism Without Walls: The Unbearable Lightness of Being Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1995).
- For a description of the defeat of the Charlottetown Accord, see Keith Archer, Roger Gibbins, Rainer Knopff, and Leslie Pal, Parameters of Power (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1995), 146–159.
- For two recent and opposing views on Canada's trading relationship with the United States, see Marjorie Griffin Cohen, “The Meristonic Society: Restructuring and the Future of Canada Outside Quebec,” in Kenneth McRoberts, ed., Beyond Quebec: Tanking Stock of Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1995) and Richard Lipsey, Daniel Schwanen, and Ronald Wonnacott, The NAFTA: What's In, What's Out, What's Next (Toronto: C.D. Howe Institute, 1994).
- Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty, Julian Franklin, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
- John Austin, The Austinian Theory of Law, Jetro Brown, ed. (London: John Murray, 1906).
- A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (London: Macmillan, 1920).
- For a critical perspective on the impact of the Charter on Canadian governance, see Rainer Knopff and F. L. Morton, Charter Politics (Scarborough: Nelson Canada, 1992).
- Section 56 of the British North America Act.
- R.J.R.-Macdonald, Inc. v. Canadas (Attorney-General) (1995), 127 D.L.R.(4th) 1 (S.C.C.).
- Ivo D. Duchacek, Daniel Latouche, and Garth Stevenson. eds., Perforated Sovereignties and International Relations: Trans-Sovereign Contacts of Subnational Government (New York: Greenwood, 1988).
- Part V of the Constitution Act, 1982.
- Canada was established as a highly centralized federation with a strong central government and constitutionally weak provincial governments. Court decisions, particularly by the imperial tribunal designated as the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) and the minoritarian consciousness of French Canadians who, for the most part, looked to the government in Quebec City as the protector of their rights, certainly provoked autonomist impulses across the whole country. Nonetheless those impulses were gien considerable force, particularly in western Canada, by the constitutional fact that in the Confederation bargain the land, with few exceptions, is owned by the Queen in right of the province and thus the resources associated with the land–in particular minerals, oil and gas, and timber—are owned by the provinical state and regulated by provinical legislatures and governments.
- Angus Reid poll as reported in the Vancouver Sun, 25 July 1996. At about the same time, a report of an analysis prepared in January 1996 by Jocelyne Bourgon, the top civil servant in the federal government, warning Prime Minister Chrétien of a growing separatist sentiment in British Columbia. Victoria Times-Colonist, 27 July 1996.