Meech Lake Accord Case Study

With the 1990 Meech Lake Accord resulting in failure, succeeding it was the Charlottetown Accord in 1992. While primarily focusing on the Issues of Quebec at the time it did also address “the issue of Aboriginal self-government but provided for a waiting period of three years before the concept would be recognized in law. It also dealt with aboriginal representation in Parliament (Gall).” Through a total of five rounds of constitutional politics, the First Nations peoples were managing to achieve some recognition of their right to govern by consent (Russell 169, “Constitutional Odyssey”). However, the process was far from easy, it has been thus far, far from easy. During the Charlotte Accords was no exception, “reaching an accord with [First
Nations peoples] on how to make that right operational would be a difficult process (Russell 170, “Constitutional Odyssey”). On the 24th of September 1991, the federal government revealed its proposals, the important article of the proposal in relations to First Nations issues was heading four. Heading four is listed as Aboriginal self-government, “a general aboriginal right to self-government to be entrenched in the Constitution. Before the right becomes enforceable in the courts, up to ten years should be allowed to define the scope and limits of this right through agreements between aboriginal peoples and governments with overlapping jurisdiction (Russell 172, “Constitutional Odyssey”).” Despite this acquirement there were two issues surrounding the Charlottetown Accords. The first issue is that First Nations peoples right to self-govern would be inoperable for up to ten years (Russell 174, “Constitutional Odyssey”). The second issue was the mindset during the Charlottetown Accords, the Mulroney government became highly unpopular at this time and as a method of protest, the Charlottetown Accord was voted against (Gall).” Ultimately the Charlottetown Accord was rejected along with its other initiatives. Approximately close to the dates of both the Meech Lake Accord and Charlottetown Accord the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples was established.
This commission was carried forward following the Oka Crisis that took place in 1990 (Doerr). The relevance of this commission is the fact that the report submitted, instructing that there is a necessity of reconstructing relations between First Nations peoples and the average Canadian (Doerr). The purpose of the commission was to collect data and provide recommendations based upon the data collected to the government (Doerr). However, implementing the recommendations within the Commission would have required for the constitution to be amended (Doerr). The report was released in 1996 and it had accurately addressed that the government would be required “to commit to a new set of ethical principles respecting the relationship between [First Nations] peoples and the state (Doerr).” When the report had been released, the federal government made a commitment to studying it and finding ways of implementing its recommendations (Doerr). The issue that occurred was that there was a jurisdictional problem, one that has been cemented in Canada for some time. It was the framework of the Federal and Provincial governments, the Federal government could make all the promises it wants, however the provincial governments also need to be on board, hence there was little to no responses provided by the provincial governments, as they themselves viewed it as a federal initiative
(Doerr).