Viscount Haldane: 'The Wicked Step-father of the Canadian Constitution'

Viscount Richard Burdon Haldane was a philosopher, lawyer, British MP, and member of the British Cabinet during the First World War. He is best known to Canadians as a judge of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (Canada's highest court of appeal until 1949), in which role he was extremely influential in altering the constitutional relations between the federal parliament and the provincial legislatures.

Chafing under the British North America Act of 1867, which provided for a strong...