Charlottetown Accord
| Charlottetown Accord Referendum | ||||||||||
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| Do you agree that the Constitution of Canada should be renewed on the basis of the agreement reached on August 28, 1992? French: Acceptez-vous que la Constitution du Canada soit renouvelée sur la base de l'entente conclue le 28 août 1992 ? |
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| Location | Canada | |||||||||
| Date | October 26, 1992 | |||||||||
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Yes
No
The Charlottetown Accord (French: Accord de Charlottetown) was a package of proposed amendments to the Constitution of Canada, proposed by the Canadian federal and provincial governments in 1992. It was submitted to a public referendum on October 26 of that year, and was defeated.
The Statute of Westminster, 1931, granted Canada de jure independence from the United Kingdom, but Canada requested that the British North America Acts, the written portions of the Constitution of Canada, be exempted from the statute because the federal and provincial governments could not agree upon an amending formula for the Acts. Negotiations between Ottawa and the provinces were finally successful in 1981, allowing Canada to patriate its constitution by passing the Canada Act 1982, which included the Constitution Act 1982 and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and finally established an amending formula for the Canadian Constitution, without the assent of the National Assembly of Quebec.
Attempts to bring Quebec back into the constitutional framework resulted in the Meech Lake Accord, which failed when the provinces of Manitoba and Newfoundland were not able to ratify the document by the deadline established by it. This was followed by a resurgence in the Quebec sovereignty movement. Premier Robert Bourassa stated that a referendum would occur in 1992 on either a new constitutional agreement with Canada or sovereignty for Quebec, and citing his dignity, refused to again negotiate as one province.
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