Constitutional Commentaries: An Assessment of the 1991 Federal Proposals

Agar Adamson is the author of Letters of Agar Adamson, 1914–19 and former chair of the Department of Political Science at Acadia University in Nova Scotia.

As the title suggests, this work is a review by a group of academics of
the constitutional amendment proposals put forth by the federal
government in September 1991. Those proposals may be history, yet the
issues continue and thus the assessments of the proposals are useful,
not only for historians but also for future constitutional scholars.
Charles Taylor’s “The Politics of Recognition” is an interesting
and thoughtful discussion on equality and special recognition of
culture. Given that the “special status” argument for both Quebec
and the First Nations is an ongoing debate, this short piece will be a
useful starting point for future work on the recognition of
distinctiveness in the Constitution. Reg Whitaker’s “A Hijacked
Process” will also prove useful to future constitutional
“builders” as a warning of how not to tackle the process. Of course,
an inspection of the Charlottetown Accord illustrates how few of the
Government of Canada’s proposals actually survived, a fact that limits
the practical value of this work.