6
Trudeau would probably have conceded, and I certainly do, that our constitution itself constitutes a “treaty among Canadians” in establishing the federal principle and provincial governments. Trudeau’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms could equally be so described. A supreme irony is that Section 35 of his 1982 constitutional amendments is the legal underpinning for the treaty process. But Trudeau would have perhaps responded that, all of that said, federalism can only be stretched so far, and that the creation of closed societies in citizenship terms goes farther than the elastic will allow.