The West failed to hold its settlers. Farm and factory found
neither markets nor profits. The country was bled white by
emigration. Parliamentary contest and racial feud threatened the
hard-won unity. Canada was passing through its darkest hours.
During this period, political friction was incessant. Canada was
striving to solve in the eighties the difficult question which
besets all federations--the limits between federal and provincial
power. Ontario was the chief champion of provincial rights. The
struggle was intensified by the fact that a Liberal Government
reigned at Toronto and a Conservative Government at Ottawa, as
well as by the keen personal rivalry between Mowat and Macdonald.
In nearly every constitutional duel Mowat triumphed. The accepted
range of the legislative power of the provinces was widened by
the decisions of the courts, particularly of the highest court of
appeal, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in England.
The successful resistance of Ontario and Manitoba to Macdonald's
attempt to disallow provincial laws proved this power, though
conferred by the Constitution, to be an unwieldy weapon. By the
middle nineties the veto had been virtually abandoned.
More serious than these political differences was the racial feud
that followed the second Riel Rebellion. For a second time the
Canadian Government failed to show the foresight and the sympathy
required in dealing with an isolated and backward people.
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