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In Britain, a meeting of the Privy Council means a meeting of the Queen and three or more Privy Counsellors (at least four must be summoned, but only three need be present). Such meetings are, of course, summoned for purely formal purposes, but they are not infrequent. It used to be blandly assumed that similar meetings of the Queen's Privy Council for Canada had taken place only very rarely indeed. Successive articles by Professor Mallory showed that at least in the early years after Confederation this was not so.Professor MacNutt, on the other hand, has suggested that, until Lord Lome's assumption of the Governor-Generalship, meetings of the Council with the Governor present were the rule rather than the exception, and that they were much more than merely formal. He says: "Shortly after his arrival in Ottawa, Lorne was astonished by an invitation to sit in Council with [his ministers] as public business was discussed. He was shown the high-backed, decorated gubernatorial chair in the cabinet room in the east block where Dufferin had sat like a Stuart monarch and sometimes summarily influenced debate. Lorne refused; most informed men were confused and mystified."

During the election of April, 1963, Liberal speeches and editorials tended to depict minority government (that is, government by a cabinet with less than half the seats in the House of Commons) as a nameless, faceless horror, the political fate that is worse than death. The authors of these productions are now hard at work trying to prove themselves wrong. They may not find it easy. For they face three deeply rooted popular notions on the subject; indeed, it was precisely because these notions were so widespread and so deeply rooted that the appeal to vote for a winner proved so powerful.The first is that minority governments are altogether exceptional, abnormal, almost unheard of, except, of course, among benighted continental Europeans and other "lesser breeds without the Law." This is simply not so. We have had relatively few minority governments, colonial, Dominion, or provincial, in Canada; but Britain, Australia, and New Zealand have had plenty. Britain, from 1834 to 1931, had sixteen, which held office for a total of thirty-two years out of the ninety-seven. In Australia, before federation, minority governments were the rule rather than the exception in New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania till the 1890's, and in Victoria till the 1880's (New South Wales often had three or four governments in a single Parliament, South Australia four or five), and there have been plenty of minority governments in the states since federation. The Commonwealth itself had nothing but minority governments (six of them) from its inception till 1909, and another as recently as 1941–43. Minority governments were the rule also in New Zealand till the 1890's (one Parliament saw six governments). So it can scarcely be maintained, rationally, that minority government is something monstrous and unnatural, foreign to the whole spirit of British parliamentary institutions.

No one questions the power of Parliament to approve or condemn the actions of the Queen's ministers. But has it or has it not also the power to advise, to ask the Crown to take or not to take some particular action? May says that the British Parliament, at any rate, has: "An Address to Her Majesty is the form ordinarily employed by both Houses of Parliament for making their desires and opinions known to the Crown." The subjects of such Addresses "have comprised every matter of foreign or domestic policy; … the administration of justice; … and, in short, representations upon all points connected with the government and welfare of the country."Edward Blake was equally clear and emphatic that the Canadian Parliament also possessed this power. Replying on April 30, 1890, to Sir John Thompson's contention that it would be unconstitutional for the Government to disallow a provincial Act after announcing that it would not disallow, Blake said flatly that this was wrong, because Thompson's doctrine might
thwart, annul or affect the power of Parliament to express its opinion by Address, requesting His Excellency to exercise his power to disallow. … The Parliament of the country has a power not merely to approve and to condemn, but it has also a more important power with reference to every political and executive act-it has a power to advise. … Neither the approval nor the condemnation of an accomplished act serves any purpose save that of criticism. The power of advice is the great power of Parliament, a power to be exercised with reserve, but to be maintained in efficiency; and to preserve effectively that power, it is necessary that we should deem that it has not passed beyond the domain of Parliament to advise within the twelve months, no matter what the Executive may do. … It is of very little use for Parliament to say to Ministers, who have decided that they think an Act ought to be allowed: "Gentlemen, we think you are wrong; we condemn you; we censure you." Are we to be told that if the twelve months still remain unexpired, we may condemn the Administration, forsooth, but the Act must remain operative; that we cannot make our advice effective; that we cannot take a step which will cause that to be done which the great council of the country decides in the interest of the country ought to be done? The power of Parliament itself would be thwarted by the proposition of the hon. Minister of Justice.

You will perhaps think that, with that introduction, I have already answered the question in the title. Don't jump to conclusions! Attendez un peu!When I was elected president of this Association last year, I could scarcely have been more astonished. Obviously, there were dozens of people far better qualified. I asked myself why I had been chosen, and there was only one possible reason that seemed to me to make any sense. The Association was to become bilingual, and I was one of the few senior English-speaking members who could make a respectable noise in French. I hasten to agree that this is a most inadequate reason for my election, but it is still the only one I can think of.Be that as it may, the twin facts that the Association is now to be officially bilingual, and that I can make a respectable noise in French, seem to me to impose upon me a double duty: first, to say something about our bicultural state (you observe how carefully I avoid, so far, the controversial word "nation"), and second, to say at least part of it in French.