The Quiet Revolution and two major language bills have transformed Quebec society. Ottawa’s response to Quebec’s constitutional demands has been slow and erratic. Today Ottawa’s bilingualism policies are under heavy criticism. To complicate matters, the English-speaking provinces are seeking more autonomy; and the centralizing economics of John Maynard Keynes – our modern ‘father of Confederation’ – are being challenged. Can our constitution cope with these stresses? Should it be amended, rewritten – or perhaps simply ignored?

Edward McWhinney offers the first thorough analysis of nearly two decades of constitutional development. His book examines Quebec’s demands since 1960 for social, economic, linguistic, and political self-determination, and the implications of these demands for our federal system. It also looks at the new pressures on such federal institutions as the Senate and the Supreme Court coming from the constitutional proposals of the English-speaking premiers. The responses of successive federal governments, up to the Constitutional Amendment Bill of 1978, are studied.

Since the election in 1976 of a Quebec government officially committed to separatism, the province has begun, without constitutional challenge, to transfer power to new social and economic elite. Edward McWhinney scrutinizes the mechanisms of Quebec’s transformation and, in his general survey of constitutional evolution, suggests new possibilities for a truly ‘cooperative federalism’ and ‘renewed’ Confederation.

PROFESSOR EDWARD McWHINNEY of the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto has been an Assistant Professor at Yale University; and also a Visiting Professor at New York University, at the Ecole Libre des Hautes Etudes, and at the Max-Planck-Institut (Volkerrecht) in Heidelberg. He has also been a Legal Consultant to the United Nations. He is author of Judicial Review in the English-speaking World, now in its second edition, and of Constitutionalism in Germany; he was also Editor and contributor to the symposium volume Canadian Jurisprudence. He has published many articles in such journals as the Harvard Law Review, the American Journal of Internal Law, the Revue Internatinoale de Droit Compare, the Archiv fur Rechts und Sozialphilosphie. He is a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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