Charter versus Federalism: The Dilemmas of Constitutional Reform

Nobuaki Suyama is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the
University of Alberta.

Cairns, a leading Canadian political scientist, has produced another
enlightening and readable book.

Although it has been argued by various scholars that federalism and
parliamentary government—two pillars of the 1867 Constitution—are
incompatible in many ways, Cairns introduces another source of discord
into the constitutional mix: namely, the Charter. What Cairns calls
“Charter Canadians” enjoy individual and collective rights under the
Charter, which forms an important part of the 1982 Constitution.
However, that same Constitution contains a serious contradiction
involving federal and provincial powers—a dissonance that was to
undermine the Meech Lake round of constitutional negotiations.

Cairns also argues that Canadian politics should no longer be defined
by federal–provincial dichotomy or by English–French duality. But he
admits that this kind of interpretation may be premature, and that the
old-fashioned sense of intergovernmental relations may still more
accurately portray the reality. Even so, this book should be on a list
of essential readings for any serious student of Canadian politics.