The Constitutional Status of the Australian States and Canadian Provinces

IT is necessary to give close consideration to the question of the general constitutional status of the Australian States and the Canadian Provinces. As we have noted, references to his earlier writings show that Keith at first made no attempt to distinguish between the relative constitutional status of the States or Provinces and that of the central Governments in the two Federated Dominions. About 1926, however, his opinion seems to have altered. In 1933 he went to pains to point out that the declaration of equality of status contained in the 1926 declaration of the Imperial Conference ‘has no application to the Governors of the States or Lieutenant-Governors of the Provinces’. ¹ At the same time he asserts that the Governor in the Australian States ‘still acts as an agent of the Imperial Government in addition to his normal function as constitutional head of the State’. ² And he elaborates this view later, saying:

‘In the States of Australia and the Provinces of Canada, the Governors and Lieutenant-Governors are still able to act as agents of the British and the Dominion Governments. Moreover, in the case of New Zealand and Newfoundland the same principle is observed, as neither Government has shown any desire to act on the resolution of the Imperial Conference of 1926. In none of these cases, however, is there much important work to be done, save that the Governments of New Zealand and Newfoundland are thus kept in effective touch with the views of foreign affairs of the British Government.’ ³