George Brown Was No Happy Multiculturalist

But consider Brown. He began from the same premise: cultural diversity is inevitable. Be he did not celebrate it. He was no happy multiculturalist. He argued bluntly that social diversity is a threat to civil peace. Diversity excites "hostile feelings" among the populace. It shores up political relations of domination and subordination. His argument in a nutshell was that interests in relation to race, religion, and nationality must be excluded from the federal level and "thrown over on the localities."

--Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 92.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness: The Unalienable Rights of Man

In the Canadian Legislative Council. David Christie said, there are "some points of variance [between the British Constitution and the American] but the same great principle is the basis of both--that life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are the unalienable rights of man, and that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. This is the secret of the strength of the British Constitution, and without a free and full recognition of it no government can be strong or permanent."

--Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 26.

The Canadian Revolution

Joseph Cauchon puts the matter this way: "That which is going on at the present moment before our eyes is neither more nor less than a revolution, a bloodless one if you will, but as complete a revolution in ideas and things as if we had reached it by the spilling of blood."

--Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 25.

Parliamentary Locke

What I offer is a book about the making of the Canadian Parliament. The Locke whom I discovered in the ratification debates is the "parliamentary" Locke--the John Locke who describes and defends the English parliamentary form of government. I have come to the conclusion that this idea of parliamentary government lies at the heart of Confederation and at the heart of the Canadian political identity.

--Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 7.

Popular Sovereignty and the House of Commons

According to Edmund Morgan, the English House of Commons "invented" popular sovereignty to challenge the legitimacy of the doctrine of the divine right of kings and in this way to justify the sovereignty of Parliament. "The English House of Commons ... invented a sovereign people to overcome a sovereign king."

--Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 26.

Confederation and the People

The Confederation story is often told in terms of the three conferences. The provincial leaders met at Charlottetown in the fall of 1864. Having agreed on Confederation in principle, they moved to Quebec City, where the union agreement was drafted. And then in the winter of 1866-67, the Fathers met British officials in London to cast their work in the formal language of constitutions. But to tell the story in this fashion encourages the idea that Confederation was a deal brokered by elites. It ignores "the people." It ignores the ratification process.

--Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 32.

Canada's Classical Liberal Founders

In the early twentieth century, it was the standard teaching that the crucial event of the pre-Confederation years, the event that shaped political attitudes and set the stage for the union of 1867, was the overthrow of the colonial oligarchies. Robin Winks calls the historians and political scientists who subscribed to this view "liberals." Today, we would call them classical liberals, or Lockean liberals. In my opinion, they offer a picture of our history that is consonant with the views of the Canadian founders.

--Janet Ajzenstat, The Canadian Founding: John Locke and Parliament (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007), 14.