Foreign Affairs in the Canadian Constitution

Examines how international issues are handled between the Canadian federal government and its provinces.

The ability to make decisions impacting international affairs can be a thorny subject for a federal state like Canada. Provinces wield considerable powers, but does their legal authority extend beyond provincial borders? How is foreign affairs power defined within the law? Foreign Affairs in the Canadian Constitution breaks new ground with a rigorous exploration of these questions.

Scott Fairley explores federal-provincial confrontations over foreign affairs, beginning with the free-trade debate of the 1980s. To contextualize the issues, he traces Canada's evolution from a semi-colonial to an autonomous nation-state and offers comparative analyses of legal approaches in other federal states, such as Australia and the United States.

Fairley proposes that over time, governmental practice and judicial interpretation have construed foreign affairs as a constitutionally supported field of federal jurisdiction. This meticulously argued conclusion allows us a better understanding of Canada as a unified nation-state within the community of nations.