1 MacGuigan, Mark Minister of Justice, Reform of the Senate: A Discussion Paper (Ottawa:Publications Canada, 1983), 2.Google Scholar

2 See, for example, Smiley, Donald “Federalism and the Legislative Process in Canada,Google Scholar ” in William, Neilson, A. W. and MacPherson, James C. (eds.). The Legislative Process in Canada: The Need for Reform (Montreal:Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1978), 73–87.Google Scholar

3 Canadian Constitutional Charter (The Victoria Charter) 1971 , reprinted in Paul Fox (ed.), Politics: Canada (4th ed.; Toronto:McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1977), 22.Google Scholar Twenty-one of the Charter's 61 articles concerned the Supreme Court.

4 Leading examples are the Committee on the Constitution of the Canadian Bar Association, Towards a New Canada (Ottawa, 1978), chap. 9, and Jones, David“A Constitutionally Guaranteed Role for the Courts, ” Canadian Bar Review 57 (1979), 669.Google Scholar

5 For a spirited Quebec critique of section 96 see Jerome Choquette, Justice Today (Quebec: Gouvernement du Québec, Ministère de la Justice, 1976), chap. II.

6 Easton, DavidA Systems Analysis of Political Life (New York:John Wiley, 1965), 353 and 390–91.Google ScholarLoon, Richard Van and Whittington, Michael distinguish “allocative” from “symbolic” outputs in The Canadian Political System (3rd ed.: Toronto:McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1981),Google Scholar but their examples of symbolic outputs are drawn from the bureaucratic rather than the constitutional process.

7 The symbolic dimension of the Charter is examined in Russell, Peter H.“The Political Purposes of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, ” Canadian Bar Review 63 (1983), 30.Google Scholar

8 See Edelman, MurrayThe Symbolic Uses of Politics (Urbana:University of Illinois Press, 1970).Google Scholar

9 See Andrews, William G. (ed.), Constitutions and Constitutionalism (Princeton:Van Nostrand, 1961), 23–25.Google Scholar

10 See Brunner, Georg“The Functions of Communist Constitutions: An Analysis of Recent Constitutional Developments, ” Review of Socialist Law 3 (1977), 121–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 The Constitution Act. 1867 , s. 101.

12 Hogg, PeterCanada Act 1982 Annotated (Toronto:Carswell. 1982), 92–93.Google Scholar

13 Cheffins, Ronald “The Constitution Act, 1982 and the Amending Formula: Political and Legal Implications, ”Google Scholar in Belobaba, Edward P. and Gertner, Eric (eds.). The New Constitution and The Charter of Rights (Toronto:Butterworths, 1983), 53.Google Scholar

14 The Quebec Liberal Party, A New Canadian Federation (Montreal, 1980), 58. Similarly, the Pépin-Robarts Task Force on Canadian Unity links the case for retaining civil law appeals to the importance of having Quebec “participate as fully in all federal institutions as the other provinces” (A Future Together [Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1979], 100–01).

15 The Constitutional Amendment Bill (Bill C-60) (Ottawa: Government of Canada, 1978), section 111.

16 Best Efforts Draft: The Supreme Court of Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Intergovernmental Conference Secretariat. 1980), Document No. 800–14/059.

17 Statutes of Canada, 1974–75–76 , c. 18, s. 5.

18 The Canadian Bar Association's Committee on the Constitution reports that in 1975 the Supreme Court heard 31 predominantly civil law cases: in 1976, 16: in 1977, only six (Towards a New Canada , 58).

19 Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems (Tremblay Report) (Quebec. 1956) Vol. 3, 295: and Morin, Jacques Yvan. “A Constitutional Court for Canada, ” Canadian Bar Review 43 (1965), 545.Google Scholar

20 Government of Alberta, Harmony in Diversity (Edmonton, 1978), chap. IV.

21 A New Canadian Federation , 60.

22 “Report to Cabinet on Constitutional Discussions, Summer 1980: The Outlook for the First Ministers Conference and Beyon” (report prepared by officials for federal cabinet known as “the Kirby Memorandum” and unofficially released on August 30, 1980).

23 Bickel, AlexanderThe Least Dangerous Branch (Indianapolis:Bobbs-Merrill, 1982).Google Scholar For Canadian criticisms see LeDain, Gérald E.“Concerning the Proposed Constitutional and Civil Law Specialization of the Supreme Court, ” La Revue Juridique Thé;mis 2 (1967). 107,Google Scholar and Lederman, William“Current Proposals for Reform of the Supreme Court of Canada, ” Canadian Bar Review 57 (1979), 688–89.Google Scholar

24 Province of British Columbia, British Columbia: Constitutional Proposals (Victoria:Queen's Printer, 1978), 50.Google Scholar

25 McWhinney, EdwardCanada and the Constitution 1979–82 (Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1982), 89.Google Scholar

26 Best Efforts Draft , section 12.

27 Ibid. section 8.

28 Smiley, Donald“Central Institutions, ” in Stanley M. Beck and Ivan Beraier (eds.), Canada and the New Constitution: The Unfinished Agenda , vol. 1 (Montreal: Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1983), 24–25.Google Scholar

29 There have been periods in which a region was not “represented” on the Supreme Court: the first judge from western Canada was appointed in 1903 and there was no judge from the Atlantic Provinces from 1924 to 1932.

30 The Constitutional Amendment Bill , section 104.

31 British Columbia: Constitutional Proposals . 51.

32 A New Canadian Federation , 101 and 130.

33 This observation is based on the statistical analyses of the Supreme Court Report provided annually in the Osgoode Hall Law Journal . My analysis of these reports indicates that 67 per cent of the decisions reported in the 1979 edition of the Supreme Court Reports dealt with these matters as opposed to 45 per cent of those reported in the 1974 edition.

34 Between 1974 and 1979 the number of motions heard by the Court increased from 192 to 441. The number of cases decided on the merits with reported judgments in 1979 was 138 as compared with 94 in 1974.

35 In 1982 the United States Supreme court received 4,242 petitions for writs of certiorari (the equivalent of a request for leave to appeal) and decided to hear 289. See “How Serious is the Supreme Court's Workload, and What Should Be Done About It? ” Judicature 66 (1983), 394–407.

36 A Future Together , 101.

37 British Columbia: Constitutional Proposals, 47.

38 Although James Snell and Frederick Vaughan of Guelph University have come across evidence that in the Court's early years the federal government did, on occasion, look for appointees sympathetic to its interests. This evidence will be included in their forthcoming history of the Court.

39 Hogg, Peter“Is the Supreme Court of Canada Biased in Constitutional Cases? ” Canadian Bar Review 57 (1979), 721.Google Scholar Laskin's criticisms of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council indicated considerable sympathy for central government claims.

40 The first kind of proposal was contained in the 1971 Victoria Charter, the second was supported by the Canadian Bar Association's Committee on the Constitution, the Quebec Liberal party's A New Canadian Federation , and the First Report of the Ontario Government's Advisory Committee on Confederation (Toronto, 1978). The two approaches have been combined in the Task Force on National Unity's A Future Together and the federal government's Bill C-60.

41 A strong case for this option is made in James MacPherson, “The Potential Implications of Constitutional Reform for the Supreme Court of Canada, ” in Bemier, Beck (eds.), Canada and the New Constitution, vol. 1, 161.Google Scholar

42 The constitution of some of the new federations in the Commonwealth require that the central executive consult with local chief justices or premiers, but none requires the approval of constituent governments. See Watts, R. L.New Federations: Experiments in the Commonwealth (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 1966), 286–87.Google Scholar

43 Best Efforts Draft, section 5.

44 See footnote 23.

45 For an analysis of these constitutional provisions, see Lederman, William“The Independence of the Judiciary, ” Canadian Bar Review 34 (1956), 1139.Google Scholar

46 Shimon Shetreet, Judges on Trial (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1976) 17. Shetreet identifies this principle as one of the “two essential elements” in the English precept of judicial independence. The other element is the security of judicial tenure.

47 The same phrase is in section 2(f) of the Canadian Bill of Rights. But generally Canadian courts have not given the Bill of Rights constitutional status.

48 Valente, R. v. (No. 2), (1983), 2 C.C.C. (3d) 417.Google Scholar

49 Jones, “A Constitutionally Guaranteed Role for the Courts. ”Google Scholar

50 The Constitutional Amendment Bill, iii and section 100.

51 For instance, the Committee on the Constitution of the Canadian Bar Association's Toward a New Canada, 47 and the Quebec Liberal party's A New Canadian Federation, 60.

52 Deschênes, JulesMaîtres Chez Eux (Ottawa:Canadian Judicial Council, 1981), 16.Google Scholar

53 McWhinney, EdwardJudicial Review in the English-Speaking World (4th ed.; Toronto:University of Toronto Press, 1968), chap. 6.Google Scholar

54 For a discussion of the “little separation of powers doctrine” that emerged from these cases, see Hogg, PeterConstitutional Law of Canada (Toronto:Carswell, 1977), 129–39.Google Scholar

55 A majority of the Canadian Bar Association's Committee on the Constitution called for a guarantee of the judicial review traditionally exercised by superior courts over officials, inferior tribunals and statutory bodies of all kinds (Towards a New Canada, 51).

56 It may not be necessary given Chief Justice Laskin's recent holding that “when a provincial Legislature purports to insulate one of its statutory tribunals from any curial review of its adjudicative functions, the insulation encompassing jurisdiction, such provincial legislation must be struck down as unconstitutional by reason of having the effect of constituting the tribunal of a s.96 court” (Crevierv. A.G. Quebec [1981] 2 S.C.R. 220, at 234).

57 Statement of Fact and Law of the Respondent Walter Valente submitted by R. Noel Bates in the Supreme Court of Ontario (Court of Appeal), 1972.

58 See the letter of Chief Justice Allan Me Eachern (Supreme Court of British Columbia) to MrJustice, MacKinnon, B. J. March 29, 1982Google Scholar (“Report of the Investigative Committee to the Canadian Judicial Council, in the matter of s.40 of the Judge Act: and in the matter of the Honourable Mr. Justice Berger of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, ” Appendix M |Ottawa: Canadian Judicial Council, 1982) and Chief Justice Bora Laskin, “Address to the Canadian Bar Association Annual Meeting, ” Toronto, September 2, 1982.

59 For an account of differences of opinion among Canadian judges concerning their proper role in the administration of courts, see Deschênes, Maîtres Chez Eux, 39–43, and Greene, Ian“The politics of Court Administration in Ontario. ” The Windsor Yearbook of Access to Justice 2 (1982), 124.Google Scholar

60 See Wagner, W. J.The Federal States and Their Judiciary (s'-Gravenhage: Mouton, 1959).Google Scholar

61 For a discussion of the historical background and declining utility of the diversity jurisdiction of United States Federal Courts, see Hart, Henry M. and Hecher, & Wechsler, The Federal Courts and the Federal System (Brooklyn:Foundation Press, 1953), 892–97.Google Scholar

62 At Confederation the only sustained defense of federal control over the appointment of provincial judges was provided by Hector Langevin. See his speech in Parliamentary Debates on the Subject of the Confederation of the British North American Provinces, in the Province of Canada, 1865, 387–88.

63 “Report to Cabinet” (Kirby Memorandum), 26.

64 Canada, House of Commons, Debates (June 2, 1898), 6766.

65 In 1971 the Judges Act was amended to create the position of “supernumerary judge” which creates a pool of experienced judges to assist in special cases of long duration and to meet peak workload situations. In 1973 a pool of additional judicial salaries was established to enable the federal government to respond to provincial requests for additional judges before the next round of amendments to the Judges Act.

66 For a discussion of these developments see Millar, Perry and Baar, CarlJudicial Administration in Canada (Montreal:McGill-Queen's, 1982), chap. 4.Google Scholar

67 See Deschênes, JulesThe Sword and the Scales (Toronto:Butterworths, 1979), chap. 5.Google Scholar

68 National Task Force on the Administration of Justice, Justice Services in Canada 1977–78 (Vancouver, 1979).

69 See Towards the Establishment of the Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics (Ottawa: Minister of Supply and Services, 1981).

70 Globe and Mail (Toronto), March 14, 1983.

71 Interest in these amendments was stimulated by three recent Supreme Court decisions overruling provincial laws on grounds that they contravened section 96: Re: Residential Tenancies Act 11979] 1 S.C.R. 714, Crevier v. A.G. Quebec and Re: B.C. Family Relations Act 11972) 1 S.C.R. 62.

72 MacGuigan, Mark Minister of Justice, The Constitution of Canada: A Suggested Amendment Relating to Provincial Administrative Tribunals (Ottawa, August 1983).Google Scholar

73 Roberts, D. W. “The Structure and Jurisdiction of the Courts and Classification of Offences, ” report prepared for the Law Reform Commission of Canada. 1973.Google Scholar

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75 In McEroy v. Attorney General of New Brunswick and Attorney General of Canada (not yet reported). The Supreme Court has held that section 96 prevents the federal Parliament and a provincial legislature from unifying criminal jurisdiction in a court staffed by provincially appointed judges.

76 Hogg, Peter“Federalism and the Jurisdiction of Canadian Courts. ” University of New Brunswick Law Journal 30 (1981), 9.Google Scholar

77 See footnote 64.