Patriation of the Canadian Constitution
The last formal legal tie between Canada's constitution and the British Parliament was severed on 17 April 1982, when Queen Elizabeth II, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and Justice Minister Jean Chretien signed the proclamation bringing the Constitution Act, 1982, into force on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. The Act, enacted by the British Parliament as the Canada Act 1982 at Canada's request, patriated the constitution by giving Canada a wholly domestic amending formula for the first time, ending the anomaly — preserved deliberately at the Statute of Westminster in 1931 — under which Canadian constitutional amendments still required Westminster's approval. It also entrenched the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, guaranteeing fundamental rights and freedoms enforceable by Canadian courts. The agreement underlying the Act was reached after prolonged federal-provincial negotiations; on the night of 4-5 November 1981, nine provincial governments reached a compromise on the amending formula in a meeting from which Quebec's delegation, led by Premier Rene Levesque, was absent. Levesque denounced the outcome and Quebec's National Assembly never consented to the 1982 constitutional settlement, a rift — commemorated in Quebec as 'La Nuit des longs couteaux' (the Night of the Long Knives) — that fed Quebec nationalist grievance and shaped the province's politics through the 1980 and 1995 sovereignty referendums and the failed Meech Lake and Charlottetown accords of the following decade.
- Year: 1982 CE
- Category: Political
