Meech Lake Accord

At midnight on June 30, 1990, the Meech Lake Accord, Canada’s first attempt at amending its Constitution, died a quiet yet well-publicized death. There was no climactic national vote to mark the occasion, nor was there one root cause as to why the Accord failed. As one Meech Lake insider famously remarked, “the Accord did not expire from any single wound, but rather died a death of a thousand cuts”[1]. While the accumulation of those one thousand unnamed cuts may have ultimately brought about the Accord’s demise, the foundation of that failure can still be identified. The root causes of the collapse of the Meech Lake Accord are the “distinct society” clause within the Accord, the 1988 language legislation introduced in Quebec, and the constitutional amending formula itself.

To understand why the Meech Lake Accord failed, one must examine the evolution of the Accord as a constitutional amendment and why its creation was necessary in the first place. The necessity of a constitutional amendment was guaranteed in April 1982, when Queen Elizabeth II signed into law the Constitution Act, 1982. The new Canadian Constitution, which ended Canada’s colonial status with Britain[2], was seen as a great achievement for both the country and its Prime Minister, Pierre Trudeau. However, it was destined to create conflict and division within Canada, as it had been signed despite the strenuous opposition of the government of Quebec. The Parti Quebecois, in power in Quebec during the constitutional negotiations of the early 1980s, possessed a mandate of bringing sovereignty to the province. Failing that, the goal of the PQ was to define the province of Quebec as “distinct” from the rest of Canada. As such, signing legislation which would not only strengthen ties with Canada but make Quebec equal to every other Canadian province was simply out of the question. Prime Minister Trudeau, a fervent believer in provincial equality for the sake of a united nation, pushed ahead with the