Patriation and Its Consequences

Lois Harder is a professor of political science at the University of Alberta. Her current research focuses on the law and politics of Canadian citizenship. She is the co-editor (with Steve Patten) of The Chrétien Legacy: Politics and Public Policy in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006). In 2008, she held a Fulbright Visiting Professorship at the University of Hawai'i; and in September 2014, she was the Eccles Centre Visiting Canadian Fellow in North American Studies at the British Library. She is currently writing a book on the birthright citizenship claims of the “Lost Canadians.”

Steve Patten is an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Alberta. His recent publications include “The Triumph of Neoliberalism within Partisan Conservatism in Canada” in Conservatism in Canada (University of Toronto Press, 2013) and “The Politics of Alberta’s One-Party State” in Transforming Provincial Politics: The Political Economy of Canada’s Provinces and Territories in a Neoliberal Era (University of Toronto Press, forthcoming). With Lois Harder, he edited The Chrétien Legacy: Politics and Public Policy in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2006). Dr. Patten serves on the editorial board of the Review of Constitutional Studies.

This book takes us behind the scenes of the negotiations that lead to the patriation of the Canadian constitution. Its authors take a hard look at the aftermath, intended and unintended, of the Canada Act and the Charter of Rights that it enshrined, and ask crucially important questions for Canadian politics.

Dwight Newman:

[A]n interesting and engaging collection … Readers will encounter a rich set of different ideas on patriation and its complexities. Decades later, there are new things to be said about patriation, and these authors have offered a lot of new thoughts

Margot Young, co-editor of Poverty: Rights, Social Citizenship, and Legal Activism:

Offering expert and often insider accounts of the different groups, issues, and events involved in the 1982 patriation, the contributors to this volume provide fascinating analyses that any fan of constitutional stories and development will appreciate.