Date Published:
January 2005

L’Encyclopédie de l’histoire du Québec / The Quebec History Encyclopedia

Legislative Union

Lord Durham, in his Report, in discussing the proposed union of Upper and Lower Canada, says: "Two kinds of union have been proposed - federal and legislative. By the first, the separate legislature of each province would be preserved in its present form and retain almost all its present attributes of internal legislation, the federal legislature exercising no power save in those matters which may have been expressly ceded to it by the constituent provinces. A legislative union would imply a complete incorporation of the provinces included in it under one legislature, exercising universal and sole legislative authority over all of them in exactly the same manner as the Parliament legislates alone for the whole of the British Isles ." Each type of union had its advocates in the Confederation negotiations at Quebec in 1864. A legislative union was strongly favoured by John A. Macdonald in the Confederation conferences, but opposed by the Maritime Provinces and Lower Canada. Federal union was adopted as the principle of the British North America Act. Bib.: Pope, Confederation Documents.

Source : Lawrence J. BURPEE, The Oxford Encyclopaedia of Canadian History, London and Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1926, 699p., p. 351.