Canadian Government Today Today who chooses the people that form our government If the people dont like what our government is doing what can we do about it Ultimately who is higher the government or the people ID: 597941
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Slide1
Upper Canada and the Road to NationhoodSlide2
Canadian Government Today
Today, who chooses the people that form our government?
If the people don’t like what our government is doing, what can we do about it?
Ultimately, who is higher, the government or the people?
Today, we are free to vote for whoever we want to, speak freely about issues that matter to us, and the government is
responsible
to us, the peopleSlide3
Quebec gets Divided
In 1791,
Britain
passed the
Constitution Act,
which divided the province of
Quebec
into two parts,
French-
speaking
Lower
Canada, and
English-
speaking
Upper
Canada
This was to provide the
French
Canadians with a province where they could maintain the
seigneurial
system while allowing the
loyalists
to settle in Upper Canada
This also gave each province its own separate
governmentSlide4
The government of Upper Canada
Ultimately, the most powerful people in government were still the British
king
and
parliament;
all laws passed by them would have to be obeyed by the government in Canada.
In British North America overall, the king was represented by the
governor general.
In Upper Canada specifically, the government consisted of a
lieutenant governor,
the
executive
council, the
legislative
council, and the
legislative
assembly. The first three were all
appointed
by the
British.
On the other hand, the legislative
assembly
was voted on by all
male
citizens of Upper Canada who also owned
property.
This made it seem like a
democracy
on the surface.Slide5
The Power of Veto
However, the
governor
and his
councils held all the power in
Upper Canada because they could veto any law or
regulation
that the
legislative assembly
proposed
To have the power of veto means that you can simply
stop
or
reject
a law or regulation passed
This meant that no matter what the
legislative assembly
wanted to do, it could simply be stopped by the
governor,
meaning that
Upper Canada
was not a true
democracy
Many democracies today, like the United States, and its individual states allow their leaders to veto laws but are still considered democracies; why do you think this is so and not with Upper Canada?Slide6
Rule by the Few
In addition, the province’s
executive council
came almost entirely from a group called the
Family Compact
They were mostly
loyalist
settlers and their descendants who had moved to Upper Canada after the
American Revolution,
and they made up the social and cultural
elite
of the province
Because the executive council directly
advised
the governor, they would make sure only laws that
benefitted
them directly would pass
They wanted the government to build
canals,
improve
business,
and allow
land speculation
to continue; things that benefitted them directlySlide7
Land Use
This political system made the
general
population of Upper Canada
frustrated
Most of them were involved in some way with farming
, and land speculation caused the
price
of land to become expensive
Land speculators would
buy
as much land as they could, thus reducing the amount of land freely available to farmers and
driving up
the price. This meant that they would make large
profits when they did choose to sell their land while making it expensive for farmersSlide8
A typical township in Upper Canada
The blank spaces represent publicly available land
The dark spaces represent land set aside for the Anglican church and the government, which could not be developed or used in any way without permission from the government
If you were a farmer in Upper Canada, what reasons can you think of that this would frustrate you or make your life more difficult?Slide9
Crown and Clergy Reserves
Furthermore, nothing was being done about
crown
and
clergy reserves, land that was set aside for the
government and church. They were often unused, which further reduced the amount of available land….
Why would the Family Compact not be interested in changing this system?
…and made the land the Family Compact already owned even more
expensive
They also blocked the development of
roads,
because the land set aside could not be
developed
This frustrated farmers and other
settlers too, because they had to make long winding routes to get anywhereSlide10
The beginnings of Change
Robert Gourlay,
a Scottish land agent, conducted a
survey
of farmers in Upper Canada, and why they were
frustrated
Working with the
settlers,
he created a list of
grievances
and a
petition
to change Upper Canada’s land
policies
How do you think the government reacted?
In response, Gourlay was
arrested
and
expelled
from Canada; the government was not interested in
reforming
its ways
However, this had the effect of strengthening
opposition
against the
Family Compact,
and a new leader would come to take Gourlay’s placeSlide11
William Lyon Mackenzie
became the new leader of the
reform
movement after Gourlay was expelled
He was much more
radical
than Gourlay and other members of the reform movement
They believed
change
could happen by simply
debating
and
negotiating
with the government
Mackenzie bought a
newspaper
called the
Colonial Advocate
and published articles that directly
criticized
the government and the Family Compact
He also wanted a new form of
government,
one that would still be
loyal
to Britain but was based on the
United States
His
outspoken
nature led to young members of the Family compact
ransacking
his office, but this only drew more
supporters,
leading to his
election
to the
legislative assembly
in 1828