Talk:Constitution Act, 1867

Inclusion

On 31 July 2004, this page was nominated for deletion. As a result of the debate, it has been redirected to British North America Acts. See Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Constitution Act, 1867 for a record of the discussion. Rossami 22:39, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm going to have to strongly disagree on this vote. The Act is without question the most important Act in Canada, and it should be beyond debate whether it should stay or not. It is the Act from which the government derives all of its power to make law, which makes it no less important than the US constitution. As regards to the name of the article, it is hardly spliting hairs to call it Constitution Act, 1867 as that's its official name. With the patriation of the Constitution, the BNA Act effectively does not exist anymore, so it's incorrect to call the current Act anything other than the Constitution Act, 1867. -- PullUpYourSocks 22:06, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

I should further add that the two documents are not exactly the same. The Constitution Act, 1867 has had several amendments to it and so looks a bit different. -- PullUpYourSocks 22:57, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, guys, but although I strongly agree with having an article under the title Constitution Act, 1867 (and it's unlikely anyone would VfD this, since the new version establishes notability and the last one didn't, and since the old version wasn't even deleted but merely turned into a redirect), I was bold and went ahead and merged British North America Act 1867 into this. I did this because having two articles on two different names of largely the same law, as well as articles on the British North America Acts, Canadian Confederation, and the History of the Constitution of Canada, was becoming too complex and too confusing. IMO, there's nothing wrong with having a little history in this article, just like he have a history in Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and history sections in our Charter sections 1, 15 and 28 articles. This article wasn't too big for it; it also describes a lot of what's still in the Constitution Act, 1867. CanadianCaesar 03:57, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Preamble

Preamble out of date:::

How could it *not* be out of date? It was written in the 1860s. --Ggbroad 21:55, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

See constitutional amendment and Amendments to the Constitution of Canada re: how to update and improve constitutions. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 22:07, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

K., but just wondering how one guy's opinion on the preamble is relevant to an encyclopedic article on what is probably the most important single constitutional document in Canadian history. --Ggbroad 22:31, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Encyclopedic articles, being tertiary sources, often report academic analysis. CanadianCaesar Et tu, Brute? 22:34, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

It's unclear from the quotation what the author means by it being out of date. But I'm glad he was further quoted as noting the preamble is uninspired. I truly thought I was missing something! In search of an inspiring passage, I read a good portion of the Act, only to be left bereft of any moving words. Hoping to find a glorious section to use for patriotic effect, I've come away empty, and will have to look elsewhere. It's disappointing to discover our founding document is nothing but legaleeze. Where's the soaring rhetoric, the zeal, the grandiosity of founding a new nation? Yoho2001 (talk) 11:03, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

BNA is still valid legislation in the UK

I discovered recently that the "British North America Act 1867" is still technically in force under current UK legislation (under the original name, as opposed to the Constitution Act). Here is the text as it currently stands. A footnote has been added to the introduction, stating, "The Act is not necessarily in the form in which it is in force in Canada." When laws are repealed, the text is normally removed or edited in the Statute Law Database: look at the gaps in Magna Carta, for example. I don't understand why the BNA was not repealed in 1982, since none of its provisions are relevant within the UK's modern jurisdiction. Anyhow, perhaps this curiosity should be mentioned in the text? Mtford 22:40, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

It has to remain in force under UK law to clarify the UK's position with regards to Canada since it was once a British colony. 86.11.172.114 (talk) 22:40, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

This is untrue; all that's necessary at most from the UK point of view is the relevant section of the Canada Act 1982. I suspect that the failure to repeal (so far) is simply conservatism on the part of the Law Commission when it comes to legislation of constitutional significance. 80.5.88.40 (talk) 17:30, 26 October 2009 (UTC).

Manifest Destiny

I put a "citation needed" tag after the assertion that the BNA was a response to Manifest Destiny. This may well be the case, but it came more than 50 years after the last invasion attempt and at a time when the US was not in a position to invade. It therefore seems dubious enough to me to flagged. -Rrius (talk) 12:44, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Poor writing irony

The segment: Political scientist Rand Dyck has criticized the preamble, saying it is "seriously out of date." Thus, he claims the Constitution Act, 1867 "lacks an inspirational introduction." is ironically not written well. How does being out of date "thusly" (i.e. intuitively) bring one into the idea of the next sentence that it therefore "lacks an inspirational introduction.". It is written in a poor way to express the ideas of the political scientist. Who was, ironically, critiquing the poor writing of the Act. 4.255.54.186 (talk) 17:57, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Agreed. As written, it fails to explain why the author thinks it's out of date, and how that's connected to the sadly uninspired prose of the preamble. See discussion above on Preamble, for more. Yoho2001 (talk) 11:05, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

Citation of the Act

I reverted the changes to the citation recently made by Hebggd, who added the reference to the British North America Act as a separate citation to the British statute volume, and moved the reference to the Revised Statutes of Canada to follow the Constitution Act. The reason for this is that since this is a page dealing with the Act as part of the Constitution of Canada, in my opinion the only name that should be cited is the "Constitution Act, 1867". That is the name of the Act as provided by the Schedule to the Constitution Act, 1982. As well, the reference to the British statute volume is still the official cite for the Act; the citation to the Appendix to the RSC is simply a parallel citation, and is optional. Thus, the normal way to cite the Act in Canada is : Constitution Act, 1867, 30 & 31 Victoria, c. 3 (U.K.), R.S.C. 1985, App. II, No. 11. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 15:42, 22 January 2012 (UTC)