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Canada's federation is distinct from the other two major federations in the English-speaking world in resting upon an alliance of two peoples and two cultures. Other differences exist, but this is fundamental. Since 1867 the dualism of culture has been slowly woven into the political fabric of the nation, although outside Quebec its implications are still not always appreciated or wholly accepted. With the appearance in 1956 of the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry on Constitutional Problems, English-speaking Canadians have little excuse for misunderstanding the position of their French-speaking compatriots. The Commission was appointed by provincial statute in January, 1953, under the chairmanship of Judge Thomas Tremblay. Its bulky report is never likely to be widely read. It is prolix and sometimes repetitious to the point of tedium; its analysis would have been more telling had it been tidier and more compressed. Yet, despite such flaws, it is a landmark in the literature of federalism: it describes and explains more fully than any other public document the position and anxieties of Quebec in the federal state, and defends the concept of a strict federalism as the essential basis for the success of Canada's national experiment. For the Tremblay Commissioners the issue of Quebec in the federation and the issue of the French in the nation are one and the same. In harmony with their theme they submit numerous recommendations. We cannot, however, assess these or do justice to their premises, without first reviewing briefly the historical position of Quebec in Canadian federalism.

It is one of the truisms of Canadian politics that stable federal power cannot be achieved without support from the province of Quebec. Until 1896 the dominant political party, the Conservatives, was the one which held Quebec. Since that period, Liberal ascendancy has been based on solid strength in French Canada. The problem of creating sufficient inter-cultural agreement to make possible the formulation of federal policy has been the most important single factor in determining the character of national party competition. This difficulty has set a premium on those skills of negotiation and conciliation which have in fact distinguished most successful Canadian statesmen, and has, more than anything else, inhibited the formation of national parties with consistent principles and policies.Political parties, as a condition of national success, have had to unite French and English elements; but thus far they have done so only on the most tenuous basis. For many purposes, a minimal consensus was sufficient, but it seems to have been inadequate to achieve the full measure of power and influence which the Fathers of Confederation envisaged for central government. Although judicial decisions, and economic and geographic forces, may have accentuated the trend to a decentralization far greater than that contemplated in 1867, the basic reason for this development has been the impossibility of creating national parties which would unite both French and English Canadians behind alternative programmes. In the words of a French-Canadian historian: "Les principaux auteurs de la Confédération n'avaient pas caché leur intention d'organiser un gouvernement central très puissant." It must be concluded that they either seriously overestimated the range of shared assumptions between the two cultures, or badly underestimated the degree of unity on fundamentals which was necessary to run the centralized state they had tried to create. The only type of national political party which Canada has been able to construct successfully has not proved capable of fulfilling their intentions.

Since the English conquest, the Quebec Roman Catholic Church has been the most important single agency for the defense and perpetuation of the French-Canadian heritage in North America. Although its commanding position is unchallenged, the Church has long shared its authority with elites in the political and economical spheres. These other elites, however, have by no means competed with the Church. Indeed, interchange and cooperation among elites have been characteristic of French-Canadian society. Viewed as essential to cultural survival, this close unity among elites has encouraged the retention of an ordered, hierarchical social structure with many pre-industrial features.

Même si la plupart des manuels de science politique parlent du déclin des chambres hautes à notre époque, elles n'en continuent pas moins à poser un problème « classique » et «crucial». Ce sont les deux épithètes qu'emploie Georges Burdeau dans son volumineux et inégal Traité de science politique en précisant qu' « il n'est guère de problèmes d'organisation constitutionnelle qui n'aient donné lieu, dans les milieux politiques, à des discussions plus âpres, et dans la doctrine, à une littérature plus abondante que celui de savoir si l'organe législatif doit être constitué par une assemblée unique ou par deux chambres». Dès l'antiquité, sous forme de ce qu'on appelait alors le régime mixte-la combinaison de la royauté, l'aristocratie, et la démocratie-le problème a passionné les esprits et Platon en a esquissé la théorie dans Les Lois. Aristote a précisé les idées de son maître dans sa Politique et a inspiré au Moyen Age Thomas d'Aquin qui, dans son régime politique idéal, veut combiner royauté, aristocratie, et démocratie. On ne possédait tout de même pas une idée très précise de la chambre haute qui ne s'incarna vraiment qu'avec la naissance et le développement de la Chambre des Lords en Angleterre. Mais ce n'est évidemment qu'avec l'avènement des idées démocratiques au dix-huitième siècle et surtout leur mise en pratique au dix-neuvième que se posa vraiment la question de la dualité des chambres. Après un débat fameux, en septembre, 1789, la Révolution française fut d'abord favorable à une assemblée unique mais dans la constitution de l'an III, le bicaméralisme triompha comme il devait triompher dans la plupart des constitutions pour servir de frein aux assemblées populaires. Il fut cependant, en 1830, l'objet d'une brillante attaque de la part de Jeremy Bentham dans sa lettre «to his fellow citizens of France on Houses of Peers and Senates».

Historically, French Canadians have not really believed in democracy for themselves; and English Canadians have not really wanted it for others. Such are the foundations upon which our two ethnic groups have absurdly pretended to be building democratic forms of government. No wonder the ensuing structure has turned out to be rather flimsy.The purpose of the present essay is to re-examine some of the unstated premises from which much of our political thinking and behaviour is derived, and to suggest that there exists an urgent need for a critical appraisal of democracy in Canada. No amount of inter-group back-slapping or political bonne-ententisme will change the fact that democracy will continue to be thwarted in Canada so long as one-third of the people hardly believe in it—and that because to no small extent the remaining two-thirds provide them with ample grounds for distrusting it.