ABSTRACT
The federal Government wished to terminate the residual British role in Canada's constitutional arrangements, enact a Charter of Rights binding on both the federal Government and the provinces, and provide for future constitutional amendment to be effected in Canada. The result of the majority view was that the Canadian House of Commons and Senate could secure by simple resolution what the 1867 Act denied them authority to achieve by statute. The reluctance of the majority of the Supreme Court to accept the arguments of the provinces on legality was, of course, largely attributable to their adherence to the orthodox law/convention dichotomy. It is sometimes argued that the courts recognize the existence of conventions in the course of interpreting a statute, but that the conventions themselves are not enforced in the way that a legal rule is enforced. The interaction of law and politics is well illustrated by an earlier Canadian controversy over the respective limits of federal and provincial powers.
