Opting In: Improving the 1992 Federal Constitutional 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.

In this slim volume, Bryan Schwartz, of the Faculty of Law at the
University of Manitoba, presents the reader with a thoughtful legal (as
opposed to political) analysis of the Government of Canada’s 1991
constitutional proposals. Despite the demise of the Charlottetown
Accord, many of the related issues—self-government, Senate reform,
distinct society, individual versus collective rights—remain with us
in 1993. These will have to be resolved sometime in the future, and
Schwartz’s work will be a good primer for those future constitutional
engineers. Chapter 5, “Individual and Collective Rights,” cuts to
the very heart of the Canadian federal compromise of 1867. Given the
debate—or is it debacle—surrounding the October 1992 referendum, one
wonders if Schwartz might like to rewrite Chapter 15, “The Case for
Referendums.”