DCHP-2

patriate DCHP-2 (July 2016)

• v. — Law, Politics, Administration

  the act of transferring the Canadian constitution from the mother country to the former colony.

  Type: 3. Semantic Change — The term patriate refers to a legal process of constitutional law and concerns the right of the Canadian parliament to amend the British North America Act, which was, from 1867 until 1982, located in Westminster, England. Patriate in this sense, referring to the patriation of the British North America Act to Ottawa, is a Canadian innovation and is most prevalent in Canada (see Chart 1). Note that the internationally more common term for that process was "repatriate", as shown in the 1968 quotation; subsequently, Canadian media adopted the term patriate in later years.
  See also COD-2, s.v. "patriate" and Gage-3, s.v. "patriate", which are marked "Cdn", and OED-3, s.v. "patriate", which is marked "Canad".

  See also: British North America Act  Meech Lake Accord  

  • 1968  [Justice Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau ticked off his fellow Quebeckers over the weekend for blocking attempts to repatriate the British North American Act and then complaining because Canada is still in bed constitutionally to England's apron strings.] 
  • 1981  Premier Rene Levesque has sent a letter to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asking her not to approve the federal Government's request to amend and patriate the British North America Act. 
  • 1982  In November, Ottawa and all the provinces except Quebec reached an agreement to amend and patriate the British North America Act from Britain. The British Parliament has since given its approval to patriation and the constitution is to be proclaimed by the Queen in Ottawa on April 17. 
  • 1991  Also gracing the language is the verb "yuck," described as part of the Canadian dialect with roots in Newfoundland and meaning "to vomit." One of the more contemporary Canadianisms is "patriate," a word not found in many other English dictionaries. The late prime minister Lester B. Pearson is cited by Oxford as making the first reference to the word when speaking in the House of Commons in 1966. 
  • 2000  Sept. 28 -- Supreme Court rules federal government's plan to patriate Constitution without provincial consent is legal. But court also rules there is a tradition in Canada of obtaining provincial consent for constitutional changes. 
  • 2013  And as to the substance of the 1981 patriation ruling, the court split Solomon's baby, saying the federal government had the legal right to unilaterally patriate the Constitution, but that convention required a consensus of the provinces. In other words, the Trudeau government of the day technically won the legal case, but needed to go back to the provinces. Five weeks later, on Nov. 5, 1981, there was a consensus of Ottawa and nine provinces, which is where the modern narrative of grievance begins about Quebec being isolated, abandoned and alone. 
  • 2016  Canada, it's fetching how you made over Neil Armstrong into Neil Young, thus bringing stardust down to earth. Clearly, the best way to settle any disagreeable dispute is to patriate a Constitution, almost any one will do, Andorra's looks interesting.