British Columbia Terms of Union
The British Columbia Terms of Union is an Order in Council of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. It forms part of the Constitution of Canada.[1]
British Columbia then joined the four-year-old Confederation and became the sixth province of Canada on July 20, 1871. The confederation agreement was based on terms of union negotiated in the Canadian capital of Ottawa between the Colony of British Columbia (on the west coast of North America, bordering the Pacific Ocean) and the new Dominion of Canada, extending its territory and reach continent-wide, coast to coast. The Terms of Union agreement document consists of 14 articles.
Negotiations and terms
[edit]For British Columbia, financial concerns were at the top of the list in negotiating union with Canada. The Dominion assumed BC's debts and liabilities, provided BC with a generous subsidy and an annual per capita grant, based on an inflated population figure. Canada also agreed to pay salaries of supreme court and county court judges, and pensions of previous colonial civil servants whose positions might be affected by the union with the Dominion of Canada. Other articles dealt with parliamentary representation, postal services, customs tariffs, interprovincial trade, lighthouses and facilities such as a quarantine medical station and a criminal penitentiary. The terms promised a trans-continental railway and a first-class graving dock for ship repair of a port on the Pacific Ocean coast at Esquimalt.[2][3]
The Terms of Union also addressed Indian land policy in a manner that would effectively perpetuate BC's pre-Confederation practices, through "a policy as liberal as that hitherto pursued by the British Columbia Government shall be continued by the Dominion Government after the Union". Post union, Canada would learn that the policies of British Columbia with regard to lands and Indigenous peoples were not at all "liberal".[2][3] This foundational ambiguity related to the Indian Land Question, settlement and occupation of unceded lands, is a defining characteristic of BC in Confederation and has ongoing implications for society and economy.
References
[edit]- ^ Constitution Act, 1982, s 52(2)(b) and Schedule, Item 4.
- ^ a b Dunae, Patrick (2021-07-20). "The Terms of Union – Point Ellice House Museum and Gardens". Point Ellice House. Archived from the original on 2021-07-20. Retrieved 2021-07-21.
- ^ a b Point Ellice House Museum & Gardens. (2021). BC Confederation: Part 1, retrieved 2021-07-16.
External links
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