‘The place of Quebec in Canada is at the heart of the debate on constitutional reform but is not the only source of discontent within the Canadian federal system’.

Canadian politics has become an ever-changing whirlwind of diversity. What is certain is that since the 1960’s ‘Quiet Revolution’ in Quebec, the synthesis of federalism with parliamentary government, and the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms as the three institutional pillars, have forged a battle between federal-provincial relations. Without doubt, Quebec has been at the heart of this debate leading the way into the constitutional change of 1982 with the inaugurating of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. However, other forces are at work in Canada, which are not based on the existence of: "familiar territorial and linguistic cleavages associated with federalism but from non-territorial sources based upon gender and ethnicity." Therefore, the ‘constitutional odyssey’ as Russell states, cannot associate itself with Quebec as the only or main protagonists of constitutional reform. They must be placed in a broader consensus, which includes the rights of women, multicu...