About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

21 Const. F. 1 (2012-2013)

handle is hein.journals/consfo21 and id is 1 raw text is: Reflections on the Kitchen Accord' Roy J. Romanow, PC OC QC.* It is, indeed, an honour to be a part of the Pa- triation Negotiations Conference, sponsored by the Centre for Constitutional Studies, explor- ing the method and substance of Canada's most significant constitutional development since Confederation. I want to say a word about why this confer- ence matters. Canada's search to understand its dynamics and its values was an important step in national self-awareness. To my mind, patria- tion reflects both a point of constitutional ma- turity and a point of sophisticated intergovern- mental process. A nation lives, in significant part, by the ways in which it understands its constitution's purposes and principles. We most certainly do not make a mistake when we take time to get beneath and beyond the constitution's par- ticularistic and often contingent provisions, and look for the meaning that it has for its own political community - the sense of nation that propels its makers into agreement. I believe that it is by understanding the context in which our Constitution was made that we can come to understand how that Constitution bears on our present context - in the place and time in which, and at which, we now stand. When we honour our past, we enrich our present. So, why was this constitutional reform so important? And, what did those who participat- ed in the processes by which it was formed, be- lieve to be its value to our national development? No one should put ahead, in the ranking of importance, the value to Canada of patria- tion - the putting in place of a domestic con- stitution that stood for Canada's fully realized and formalized capacity of self-determination. It is what sovereign nations place the greatest stock in, and, since the 1926 Balfour Declara- tion by Great Britain, full patriation had been Canada's aim and its hope. This project was in- terrupted by depression, war, social reconstruc- tion, the demands of the modern activist state and, finally, by the great difficulty of finding a national consensus. In all these years, Canada both yearned for this sign of its sovereignty and experienced the near impossibility of obtaining the necessary national agreement to achieve it. At the end, we did not, in fact, find the full national agreement that we wanted. Without unanimity there will, forever, be an element of failure in the history of our nation building - a serious chink in the edifice of a self-deter- mining nation. However, it is a chink that, in my view, is better than the endless scenarios of divisiveness and conflict that confronted us on the afternoon of November 4, 1981, if no agree- ment, whatsoever, had been reached. Total fail- ure would have stood as Canada's deep failure as a nation - and as its shame. I recognize that this is a highly contentious assessment, but I maintain that one cannot un- derstand the dynamics of November, 1981 with- out grasping the strength of the imperative on Canada to find in itself the capacity to set its own destiny. The deals made were certainly imperfect and the process by which they were made was sometimes unfair. Still, the full realization of our nationhood in the 1981-82 constitutional reforms was an achievement whose national value is beyond measure. Constitutional Forum constitutionnel 1

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most