This article is word for word from an editorial in The Prince Rupert Daily News. I do not know what year it was published, but I’ve had this copy for at least eight years.
As Canadians prepare to celebrate our national holiday, few will realize that they are also celebrating a dirty bit of political chicanery. It all began at 4 p.m. on Friday, July 9th, 1982.
The House of Commons met in afternoon session, and only one item was on the agenda: Bill C-201, a private member’s bill to change the name of the July 1 holiday from “Dominion Day” to “Canada Day.”
Fewer than 12 members of the 282 members of the House show up for work, which presents a procedural problem because a quorum of at least 20 members is required to conduct business. Officially, no bills can be passed. Nevertheless, Bill C-201 is given second and third reading. The time is 4:05 p.m. Our hard working representatives call it a day.
What transpired in those five minutes nearly 20 years ago was a contempt of Parliament, but nobody cared. When the error was brought to the attention of Speaker Jeanne Sauve the following Monday, she said no procedural rules had been broken because nobody called for a quorum count. A quorum was deemed to exist, thus making the actions of the House lawful.
Leaving aside this feeble technicality, Opposition members objected that they were not properly forewarned of the bill’s second reading. “Today – July 12 – I received notice advising that Bill C-201….wouldn’t be before the House during private members’ hour on Friday last, July 9″ said Alberta Tory MP Gordon Taylor. “The notice said the second reading would be resumed, but the notice has not yet been posted on the members’ bulletin board.”
Yvon Pinard, the French-Canadian president of the Privy Council, claimed that the list of bills to be debated was distributed to Opposition parties on July 8, but what he then said disproves the notion that he cared at all about Parliamentary procedure:
“We – the government – had hoped the bill would be passed during one of our very late nights, but unfortunately members present at the time were not yet mature enough; now a few days later, it seems a miracle has happened and we have the results at last”.
Translation – “We wanted to ram this change through without fuss, but we didn’t get away with it. So we cheated.”
Thanks to this “miraculous act of maturity,” Canadians now celebrate a vapid, contrivance instead of a historically meaningful event.
July 1 commemorates the day in 1867 when New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and the Province of Canada formed “One Dominion under the mane of Canada,” as described in the British North America Act. In fact, the idea of a “dominion” was a uniquely Canadian achievement.
The term came from New Brunswick Senator Samual Leonard Tilley. who took it from the eighth verse of the 72nd Psalm: “He shall have dominion from sea to sea and from the rivers unto the ends of the Earth.” The passage may be biblical, but the meaning for Canada is clearly secular.
Dominion Day became the official name of our national holiday after B.C. Senator Robert William Weir Carrall presented a bill to Parliament in 1879. In his 1926 report, Lord Balfour declared Canada (as well as other Commonwealth nations) to be self-governing dominions within the British Empire constitutionally equal to each other in all respects, and united in common allegiance to the Crown.
The Balfour Report led directly to the December 11, 1931 Statute of Westminster, by which Britain invested Canada and other dominions with full legal freedom.
“Dominion Day” embodies the essence of Canadian nationhood, and is associated with nation-building events. It was as the Dominion of Canada that this country that this country came of age and fought in the Boer Was and two world wars.
“Canada Day” celebrates nothing except our institutionalized contempt for our nation’s history. You won’t find Americans celebrating “U.S.Day” instead of Independence Day, or the French celebrating “France Day” instead of Bastille Day.”
These people are proud of their history. Canadians are no different.
Taylor described the proceedings of July 9, 1982, as “sneaky, sloppy and arrogant.” What self-respecting Canadian could argue?
My copy of this editorial was published in the Chronicle-Journal in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Dominion of Canada.
