CONSTITUTIONAL DOCUMENTS

The Constitution Act, 1982 also contains a Schedule of repeals of certain constitutional enactments and provides for the renaming of others. The British North America Act, 1949, for example, is renamed in the Schedule as the Newfoundland Act. The new names of these enactments are used in this consolidation, but their former names may be found in the Schedule.

The Constitution Act, 1982 was enacted by the Parliament of the United Kingdom as Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (U.K.), 1982, c. 11, and is set out in this consolidation as a separate enactment after the Constitution Act, 1867. The Canada Act 1982, other than Schedule B, is contained in the first footnote to the Constitution Act, 1982.

The law embodied in the Constitution Act, 1867 has been altered many times otherwise than by direct amendment, not only by the Parliament of the United Kingdom but also by the Parliament of Canada and the legislatures of the provinces, in those cases where provisions of that Act are expressed to be subject to alteration by Parliament or the legislatures. A consolidation of the Constitution Acts with only those subsequent enactments that directly alter the text of the Act would therefore not produce a true statement of the law. In preparing this consolidation, an attempt has been made to reflect accurately the substance of the law contained in enactments modifying the provisions of the Constitution Act, 1867.

The various classes of enactments modifying the text of the Constitution Act, 1867 have been dealt with as follows:

I.  Direct Amendments

• 1. Repeals

  Repealed provisions (e.g. section 2) have been deleted from the text and quoted in a footnote.

• 2. Amendments

  Amended provisions (e.g. section 4) are reproduced in the text in their amended form and the original provisions are quoted in a footnote.

• 3. Additions

  Added provisions (e.g. section 51A) are included in the text.

• 4. Substitutions

  Substituted provisions (e.g. section 18) are included in the text and the former provision is quoted in a footnote.

 II. Indirect Amendments

• 1. Alterations by United Kingdom Parliament

  Provisions altered by the United Kingdom Parliament otherwise than by direct amendment (e.g. section 21) are included in the text in their altered form and the original provision is quoted in a footnote.

• 2. Additions by United Kingdom Parliament

  Constitutional provisions added otherwise than by the insertion of additional provisions in the Constitution Act, 1867 (e.g. provisions of the Constitution Act, 1871 authorizing Parliament to legislate for any territory not included in a province) are not incorporated in the text but the additional provisions are quoted in an appropriate footnote.

• 3. Alterations by Parliament of Canada

  Provisions subject to alteration by the Parliament of Canada (e.g. section 37) have been included in the text in their altered form, wherever possible, but where this was not feasible (e.g. section 40) the original section has been retained in the text and a footnote reference made to the Act of the Parliament of Canada effecting the alteration.

• 4. Alterations by the Legislatures

  Provisions subject to alteration by legislatures of the provinces, either by virtue of specific authority (e.g. sections 83, 84) or by virtue of  head 1 of section 92 (e.g. sections 70, 72), have been included in the text in their original form but the footnotes refer to the provincial enactments effecting the alteration. Amendments to provincial enactments are not referred to; these may be readily found by consulting the indexes to provincial statutes. The enactments of the original provinces only are referred to; there are corresponding enactments by the provinces created at a later date.

III. Spent Provisions

Footnote references are made to those sections that are spent or probably spent. For example, section 119 became spent by lapse of time and the footnote reference indicates this; on the other hand, section 140 is probably spent, but short of examining all statutes passed before Confederation there would be no way of ascertaining definitely whether or not the section is spent; the footnote reference therefore indicates the section as being probably spent.

General

The enactments of the United Kingdom Parliament or the Parliament of Canada, and Orders in Council admitting territories, that are referred to in the footnotes may be found in Appendix II of the Appendices to the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985 and in the annual volumes of the statutes of Canada

The reader will notice inconsistencies in the capitalization of nouns. It was originally the practice to capitalize the first letter of all nouns in British statutes and the Constitution Act, 1867 was so written, but this practice was discontinued and never followed in Canadian statutes. In the original provisions included in this consolidation, nouns are written as they were enacted.

French Version

The French version of the Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982 of which the original text exists in English only is unofficial and reproduces, with only necessary changes of form, the literal unofficial translation included in Appendix II of the Appendices to the Revised Statutes of Canada, 1985.

Section 55 of the Constitution Act, 1982 provides for the preparation of a French version of the Constitution. The proposed text can be found in the “Final report of the French Constitutional Drafting Committee responsible for providing the Minister of Justice of Canada with a draft official French version of certain constitution enactments”. See details below or click here for the proposed French version.

Acknowledgement

This consolidation of the Constitution Acts, 1867 to 1982 contains material prepared by the late Dr. E. A. Driedger, Q.C. The material has been updated where necessary but the Department gratefully acknowledges Dr. Driedger's earlier work. [HTML Version] [PDF Version: 230 Kb]