Reputedly Unamendable Yet Frequently Amended
The Constitution of Canada has gained a reputation for having become unamendable and ossified since 1992 when Canadians rejected the proposed Charlottetown Accord in a country-wide referendum and brought the era mega-constitutional amendment to a grinding halt. This question consumed Canada from the early 1970s to the early 1990s and scared the generations that went through this trauma. They have ever since resigned themselves to accepting this constitutional paralysis and dare not break this uneasy truce. They often speak of amending the constitution as “Opening the Constitution” with audible capital letters yet in hushed tones, with the obvious allusion to opening Pandora’s Box and unleashing havoc hanging over any such reluctant conversation like the Sword of Damocles. This has become of the most toxic and bizarre taboo of Canadian political culture over the last thirty years, not least because it presents a false narrative which limits the concept of “constitutional amendment” — or the obscene blasphemy of “opening the constitution” — to two of the five amending procedures, as if the other three procedures and the constitutional amendments proimulgated under them didn’t exist and didn’t count for anything. This false, or at least exaggerated, narrative also stifles legitimate debate and makes Canada seem like a less serious country that can’t even pass uncontroversial housekeeping amendments.
While we have thus far fallen short of Unanimity with the failures of the Meech Lake Accord in 1990 and the Charlottetown Accord in 1992, we nevertheless amended the Constitution of Canada under General Amending Procedure once, in 1983,[1] and we have amended it many times under the three other amending procedures contained in Sections 43, 44, and 45 of the Constitution Act, 1982.
James Bowden's Blog 