At the Quebec Conference, the delegates passed 72 Resolutions were legalistic and contractual in tone, deliberately different from the revolutionary nature of the American Constitution drafted a century earlier.
The Canadian Resolutions outlined the concept of federalism-with power and responsibilities strictly divided between the provinces and the federal government.
The Resolutions also outlined the shape of a national Parliament, with an elected House of Commons based on representation by population, and an appointed Senate whose seats would be equally split between three regions: Canada West, Canada East and the Atlantic colonies, for the purpose of providing each region with an equal voice in the appointed chamber. The resolutions also included specific financial commitments, including the construction by the new federal government of the Intercolonial Railway from Quebec to the Maritimes. Railways between the colonies would boost economic opportunity through increased …show more content…
The Hudson’s Bay Company sold Rupert’s Land to Canada in 1870, and the young country expanded with the addition of Manitoba and the North-West Territory that same year. British Columbia was brought into Confederation in 1871 and PEI in 1873. The Yukon territory was created in 1898 and the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were created in 1905.
In conclusion, I would like to finish this say that Confederation was the product, in the 1860s, of three conferences and delegates from five colonies, the practical ideas of how it might actually be achieved came from John A. Macdonald (who became the new country's first prime minister) with help from Alexander Tilloch Galt, and with George-Etienne Cartier’'s insistence on a certain essential minimum of provincial rights. Confederation had not been originally Macdonald's idea, but he was finally the one who took hold of it and made the running. Thus, it is to Macdonald and his ideas that Canadians should look to understand the character of that 1867