Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9556563" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Yes, it is a non-issue.By convention. Which was my whole point.As for when Royal Assent has been denied in Canada, that's easy: Lieutenant Governors (those who exercise the monarch's authority within the individual provinces, not at the federal level) have denied it in an individual province 90 times, the most recent in 1961 in Saskatchewan by Frank Lindsay Bastedo, referring the bill to the federal Parliament, which approved Bill 56 (An Act to Provide for the Alteration of Certain Mineral Contracts). Notably, royal assent was not granted despite Bastedo's advisors advising him to grant it, meaning that even the "on the advice of ministers" type things had no limitation on this. Bastedo was not, as far as I can tell, subject to any particular punishment or loss of political influence as a result, as he continued to serve in the office for two years after this.Furthermore, this process is entirely legal; in the 1930s, when the "Social Credit" party took power in Alberta,<a href="https://lieutenantgovernor.ab.ca/role/lieutenant-governors-and-royal-assent/" target="_blank"> two different Lieutenant Governors exercised the right</a> to withhold ("<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disallowance_and_reservation_in_Canada" target="_blank">reserve</a>") royal assent to bills, which was appealed to the Supreme Court and upheld on the grounds that the bills were unconstitutional. Something on the order of half a dozen bills were thus functionally vetoed by the Lieutenant Governors of Alberta reserving royal assent.This power has never been used at the federal level in Canada, but legally it does exist. Per the Constitution Act 1867, section 55, the Governor General of Canada "shall declare, according to his Discretion, but subject to the Provisions of this Act and to Her Majesty's Instructions, either that he assents thereto in the Queen's Name, or that he withholds the Queen's Assent, or that he reserves the Bill for the Signification of the Queen's Pleasure." This power has never been amended nor removed, but conventions dictate that it essentially can't be used. Legally, the power is still there--it's literally in the explicit law of the land for Canada. It's just that no reasonable person who managed to get the office of Governor General would ever use it, except in the most extreme and dire situations where using it would seem to be the lesser abrogation of democracy, which is the reason why various Lieutenant Governors have reserved royal assent to provincial bills.</blockquote>

Verification