The Canadian Constitution in the Twenty-First Century

• Author: Patrick J. Monahan, Byron Shaw
• Pages: 521-529

521

CH AP TER 15

thE Canadian

Constitution in thE

twEnty-First CEntury

A. ALL QUIET ON THE CONSTITUTIONAL

FRONT?

In February 2012, a group of retired politicians a nd scholars gathered

at the University of Toronto to debate the “Quebec question for the

next generation.” The conference was prompted by the remarkable fact

that for more than a decade, the issue of Quebec’s place in Canada

had largely disappea red from public view. The result was that an en-

tire generation of political leaders and scholars outside Quebec had

developed without any sustained immer sion in issues relating to the

“Quebec question.” What was unclear was whether this silence on the

constitutional front, which had persisted for more than a full decade,

was permanent (a “new normal”) or whether it was merely transitory

and the country was destined to revert to a discu ssion of the same con-

stitutional questions and debates t hat had dominated Can adian polit-

ical discourse throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

Although there was no consensus on t his issue amongst the

participants at the February 2012 Toronto gathering, few believed

that the constitutional que stion would re-emerge to take centre stage

in Canadian p olitics anytime soon. The 2011 general federal election

had featured the collapse of the Bloc Québécois, t he rise of the NDP

in Quebec, along with a Conser vative majority government largely

based in Ontar io and the West, with mini mal Quebec representation.

While this politic al conf‌iguration poses obvious risks for the long-term