Chapter 1: The Formation of

the Canadian Federal

System
Part 5: Development of
the Canadian Federation
Territorial expansion of Canada (1867-1873)

 Original provinces – Quebec, Ontario, New Brunswick,

Nova Scotia
 The Dominion of Canada, with John A. Macdonald as
Prime Minister, added:
 British Columbia
 Manitoba

 Prince Edward Island

 Northwest Territory
Relations with the Métis

 In 1869, when colonizing the west, the Canadian

government encountered the Métis which is a nation of
indigenous people
 More than 10,000 lived in what is present day Manitoba
 The Métis were Francophone and Catholic, they would hunt
bison in the area and farm
 The Métis saw the colonization by the Canadian
government as a threat and so rebelled against them
The first Métis uprising - 1869

 The Canadian government started scouting the

west to colonize
 They targeted the Métis land
 The Métis created a provisional government to
negotiate with the Canadian government
 The Métis wanted to join Canada, and have their
language, religion, and territory be recognized
 This was denied by the Canadian government,
sparking the Red River Rebellion of 1869
 An English protestant named Thomas Scott was captured
and executed in 1870
The first Métis uprising - Consequences

 An agreement was signed with the Métis in 1870 – the

Manitoba Act
 Thispromised the Métis land, recognition of language and religion,
and a school system
 This Act created the province of Manitoba
 Many English settlers began moving to Manitoba, taking
government positions, occupying Métis land, removing the
rights of the French Catholics, etc
 Many Métis were forced to leave to the west
The second Métis uprising - 1885

 The Métis left their original land and settled

northwest of established Manitoba
 More colonists settled in these areas because of
the expansion of the railway, settling in Métis land
again
 Louis Riel launches a second rebellion, the North-
West Rebellion in 1885
 The Canadian government sent in troops to capture
Riel and his supporters
 They were charged for treason and Riel was executed
The consequences of the Métis rebellions

 The Métis rebellions divided Canada

 The English were on the government’s side
 The French were on Riel’s side
 The Métis and Riel were Francophone,
and so French Canadians disliked how
the Federal government handled the
situation
First Nations in the Dominion of Canada
– The Numbered Treaties
 The Numbered Treaties were a series of agreements
between Indigenous peoples and Canada
 They signed 11 total treaties with different
indigenous groups to take their land and colonize
more of western Canada
 They encouraged Indigenous people to settle on
reserves, and to adopt farming, to sedentarize them
 These were all assimilation tactics to control Indigenous
people and their land
Religious missions

 At this time, Indigenous people were seen as

lesser than European immigrants and Canadian
people
 Measures were taken to try to “civilize” them
throughout Quebec and Canada’s history
 Missions were established throughout Canada
to evangelize Indigenous people
A mission is a building where missionaries try to
evangelize Indigenous people in the area
Residential schools

 Tools to assimilate indigenous children into Western

culture
 Indigenous children were forced to attend,
receiving a Christian education, learning their
colonizer’s language and culture
 They were isolated from their families
 And were forced to forget their own languages, cultures,
traditions, etc
 The residential school system was finalized and spread across
Canada by 1892
 The last residential school was closed in 1996
Indigenous assimilation until 1869

 In the 1850s, the Canadian government gave Indigenous

people “Indian Status” which gave them worse rights than
Canadian citizens
 Indigenous people could give up these rights, but lose their “Indian
status”
 This was a method of assimilating Indigenous people
Act of 1869 and Band Councils

 In 1869, the federal government

eliminated “chiefs” and all other political
structures from indigenous nations and
replaced them with band councils
 Band councils were a group of indigenous
people who managed reserves (where
Indigenous people lived), but had limited
power
The Indian Act (1876) When an indigenous
person gives up
“Indian Status” and
becomes a Canadian
 Another law passed to continue to assimilate citizen
indigenous people
 It combined all the previous acts, treaties, etc into
one
 Its main goal was to enfranchise indigenous
people, and to label those who did not
enfranchise as minors
 Now those who did not give up “Indian
status” were easily managed by the federal
government
Macdonald’s National Policy

 From 1873 to 1878, Canada faced

economic crisis
 Price of wheat + lumber dropped,
American markets were creating more
stuff
 John A. Macdonald adopted
“National Policy” to help solve this
problem
Macdonald’s National Policy

 Objectives were:
 Protect Canadian businesses from
American competition
 Increase settlement of Western Canada
 It had 3 parts:
1. Increase customs duties (taxes on trade)
2. Expand the rail network
3. Grow population by settling Western
Canada
Increased customs duties (1879)

 Macdonald enacted customs duties on imported goods from

other countries
 This meant that if American companies wanted to import
something to Canada, they would need to pay extra money
 That extra money meant the good was usually priced higher
 Canadians were left choosing between taxed American goods or
untaxed Canadian goods
 They chose Canadian goods, which made the Canadian economy boom
Expansion of Rail network

 The expansion of rail allowed to link the provinces and to

increase trade between the different regions of the
Dominion of Canada
 A transcontinental railway was proposed, connecting
British Colombia to the Atlantic ocean provinces
 By 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railway was created, linking
to the intercolonial and Grand Trunk lines that were made
previously
 This promoted trade and colonization of the West of Canada
The settlement of Western Canada

 In the early 1870s, 75% of Canada’s population was in

Quebec and Ontario
 Macdonald and his government wanted to attract immigrants to
West Canada
 These immigrants could:
 Grow wheat to feed Canada
 Buy Canadian goods produced in Canadian factories
 Manufacture goods for export
 The population of the West quadrupled from 1871-1891
Honoré-Mercier and French-Canadian
Nationalism
 There was a lot of tension between the Federal
and Provincial levels of government about who can
control what and tax revenue
 French-Canadians found themselves as the Stopping the
minority in Canada, and events like Riel’s Federal
execution made them feel threatened as a people government from
 They wanted more power in Quebec to defend the controlling the
French-Canadian culture provinces
 Honoré-Mercier, premier of Quebec from 1887-
1891 wanted more provincial autonomy
The first interprovincial conference - 1887

 Mercier organized it in Quebec City, and representatives

from all over Canada attended
 The Provincial leaders met to demand that the Federal
government respect their powers
 They also wanted a greater share of the tax that the Federal
government collected
 At the end of the 19th century, provinces were given the tax and more
power
 They controlled health care and education, and the Federal
government could only intervene in the event of a crisis
1896 – a turning point

 Wilfred Laurier is elected as

the first French Canadian
prime minister of Canada in
1896
 His main goal was Canadian
unity, to find a common
ground between French and
English through their
differences