Talk:Canada Act 1982

merged

The below has been moved from Canadian Constitution Act which has been made a redirect. Alex756 23:36, 18 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The Canadian Constitution Act was a 1982 act of the Parliaments of Canada and Great Britain that granted Canada its own constitution.

The Constitution was not a new document, however. It was instead simply the British North America Act that was originally created by the English parliament in 1867. After the Constitution Act, the BNA Act was rechristened the Constitution of Canada and the British government agreed to surrender their powers to modify the document.

The Act also brought the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms into being.

Medieval times?

With regards to the introductory paragraph: there was no such thing as a "British Parliament" in Medieval times (only after 1707). A minor detail, but misleading. Will leave it up to someone else to edit, to avoid the wrath of the pedants! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.125.243.248 (talk) 21:30, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Replaced it for Great Britain; though some elaboration might be in order to specify that it was the 20th-century UK parliament. 91.125.63.103 (talk) 14:15, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Page name

The page was moved from Canada Act 1982 to Canada Act, 1982; I have moved this back, as the latter nomenclature is significantly the less common for Acts of Parliament of the United Kingdom, and the move broke lots of inbound links through double redirects.
James F. (talk) 00:38, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Enactment - clarification

Could the following sentence be written in plainer English. I find it hard to grasp the point it is making. What claim was the government of the UK making? If it is a theoretical claim, then why bother mentioning it. Personally, I don't think the UK was making any claim. Canadian politicans had NOT BEEN ABLE to agree on an amending formula from the 1860s until 1982. It was not the fault of the UK, and a lot of UK parliamentarians were surprised when the Canada Act turned up on their doorstep, and a few mildly titillated that they could somehow influence the act. I vaguely recall Trudeau saying at that time "they should hold their noses and vote for it". here is the opaque sentence. "Through section 2 of the Canada Act 1982, the United Kingdom revoked its claim to the right to issue further amendments to the Canadian constitution; actual removal of this right would be incompatible with the fundamental British principle of Parliamentary sovereignty, but that it was only the claim to the right is merely theoretical since the United Kingdom would never interfere with Canadian affairs."--BrentS 22:03, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Removed sentence since I don't think it is true. Parliamentary sovereignty applies only to UK law. Roadrunner 07:51, 2 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Removed: "which some critics say still gives Britain some political power, however superficial or unused, over the government of Canada. However, most agree that beyond membership in the Commonwealth of Nations" Is there anything stronger than 'some critics say' for this? Peter Grey 9 July 2005 04:00 (UTC)

Removed: "an integral part of the act(See Night of the Long Knives). Thus, even though Quebec refused to ratify the constitution, it was imposed in respect of conventions through the Canada Act, 1982, according to the Quebec Veto Reference. Subsequently, further constitutional amendments intended to allow Quebec to accept officially the new constitution were proposed, but all negotiations failed (see Meech Lake Accord and Charlottetown Accord)." Violates NPOV and is not actually connected to the UK legislation. Maybe could be used in article directly about consitution/constitutional debate. Peter Grey 13:49, 14 July 2005 (UTC)

Removed "virtually" from sentence "The Canada Act 1982 is an Act of Parliament passed by the British Parliament that severed virtually all remaining constitutional and legislative ties between the United Kingdom and Canada..." Since the patriation of the Constitution there exist no legal ties between Canada and the UK, all Canadian constitutional laws are now in the sole control of the Canadian governments. The UK Parliament has no force or effect in Canada. --gbambino 19:59, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

As far as British parliamentary sovereignty is concerned, the Act could in theory be repealed by any future Parliament as no Parliament can bind the hands of its successor on any matter. And there presently isn't even a mechanism by which this could be changed. However I don't think Canadian law would recognise such a unilateral repeal, so the British parliament would have absolutely no way of enforcing such an action and the political likelihood of such a move is less than zero. Timrollpickering (talk) 11:45, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Categories

Does the Canada Act fall under "Category:United Kingdom Acts of Parliament 1982"? Technically, it is a UK statute. The difficulty is that the category is very sparse. If the category were instead "1982 in United Kingdom law", it probably would not make sense, because this is a statute that will never come up in British courts of law.

By comparison, "Category:History of Quebec" doesn't sound like much of a match, but that category is defined quite broadly. Peter Grey 15:40, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't see a problem. The Act was passed by the UK parliament in 1982. The category will not be sparse in the future. Kurando | ^_^ 15:57, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I find the repeated addition of British-related categories to articles about the Constitution of Canada to be offensive. Canada is now sovereign; these articles should be about applicable laws, not history. We have the British laws category on British North America Acts anyway. CanadianCaesar The Republic Restored 08:53, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

If an Act of Parliament is passed by the United Kingdom related to Canada what possible reason is there to remove it from a category which aims to contain every Act of Parliament? If there is a seperate article for the Candadian part of it then that is one thing, but this article is about the UK act. Kurando | ^_^ 09:45, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I didn't remove your category. You may have a point about an "article for the Canadian part of it", but still, if there was no separate article for Roman Britain, my bet is that it would seem pretty strange to add Great Britain to Category:Ancient Roman provinces. CanadianCaesar The Republic Restored 10:21, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

why?

im not an expert on the act but i have to ask. Why? Why would the most powerful empire the world ever saw give up its largest domain.

Because Britain is not an empire any more, it is a democracy that recognizes the desire and need of the Canadian people to rule themselves. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.154.65.131 (talk) 18:02, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Yawn....in more practical terms they couldn't afford us anymore; idealism and national soppistry (and sophistry) had little to do with it; they maintained their economic control over us as much as possible in the wake of the Statutes of Westminster, which were a major step in imperial devolution, but their huge war debts to the US seem partly to have been compensated by giving up their primacy of influence here, which they had maintained up to and through the war, despite the Great Depression. Some asy it was when Pearson didn't do what Whitehall wanted in 1956 (Suze) that was the clincher....Skookum1 (talk) 02:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

patriation/repatriation in lede

Act of Parliament passed by the British Parliament that severed all remaining legislative dependence of Canada on the United Kingdom, in a process known as "patriation".

I know that "repatriation" means something has to be brought back that once was, and that this wasn't the case; but "patriation" definitely wasn't the buzzword at the time, "repatriation" was....fact vs terminoilogy are often at oods, but as someone who lived through the period, I found this rather jarring to read...."repatriating the Constitution" was the phrase.....Skookum1 (talk) 02:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Queen of Canada

Although the Canada Act was passed by the British Parliament, which included Royal Assent in Her Majesty's capacity as Queen of the United Kingdom, she signed the Proclamation of April 17, 1982 bringing it into force in her capacity as Queen of Canada. This is apparent from the opening words of the Royal Proclamation: "Elizabeth the Second by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom, Canada and her other realms and territories Queen". That is her royal style and title as Queen of Canada, as defined by the Canadian Royal Styles and Titles Act, s. 2. If she had signed it in her capacity as Queen of the United Kingdom, she would have used the British Royal Style, which defined her royal style as: "Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith".

Just adding on to this, the royal proclamation technically has the Queen referring to herself in the third person. "The Parliament of the United Kingdom" referenced in it includes the Queen in her capacity as UK Monarch. WanukeX (talk) 21:27, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Amendments: is royal assent part of the process?

Given that the article is incomplete if it does not let the reader know whether or not royal assent is required for any particular amendment to the Constitution under Part V of the Act,[1] is the inclusion of that information stalled for lack of secondary sources? Qexigator (talk) 09:20, 25 May 2015 (UTC)