Why Was Confederation Necessary For Canada

The Dominion of Canada was not born because of a revolution, or a sudden outburst of nationalism. Whatsoever, it was created with a series of conferences and orderly negotiations, which eventually formed Canada. The process of negotiating to make Canada happen was not easy. Each colonies/dominions had their own terms and conditions that must be met in order for them to be part of the Canada that is known to us today. Confederation was necessary for Canada because in the 1860s there were many problems amongst the colonies. At that time, the Province of Canada alone was facing many critical problems there was a division among the English and French speaking population. Other colonies also needed assistance to develop a larger market and without

Before confederation, Quebec was known East Canada. In 1858, co-prime minister of the Province of Canada George-Étienne Cartier was in favour of splitting up the two Canadas into separate provinces, and to be governed under one federal government. Cartier and other pro-Confederation forces in Canada East gave numbers of reasons on why confederation was needed to form. Firstly, the political deadlock had made the Province of Canada nearly impossible to be governed. People believed in that Confederation would allow the newly formed federal government to make national decisions, while letting individual provinces to deal. Québec would be able to protect French Canadian interests if they were a self governing province. Secondly, Confederation would help to strengthen their economy. Lastly, for mutual benefits the construction of a railway was necessary, with the railway, colonies economy will boost together.Confederation was never as enthusiastically embraced in Quebec as it evidently was in Ontario, about 40% of the members from Quebec voted against Confederation. Almost half of the newspapers in the province strongly opposed to the idea of joining Confederation. Politicians such as Jean-Baptiste-Eric Dorion were one of the leaders in the opposing force, he lead many French Canadians to resist the formation of Confederation; He founded the newspaper L’Avenir and used as a sword to attack Confederation. “I oppose Confederation

Quebec joined Canada with the promise of culture protection; so to Quebec money was important, but the French Culture was something they cannot bear to lose. Unlike Quebec, BC joined Confederation mostly because of they are needing financial support since the colony was not declining economically. To get out of that state, they proposed the want of a transcontinental railway and for Canada to pay off all of their debts in exchange for them to join Canada. (3) However, the Dominion of Canada was more British than French, so the progress of pursuing Quebec to become part of Canada with rather more difficult when it came to dealing with BC. Whatsoever, the two provinces did have similarities on their reasons to join Confederation; that was to avoid being taken over by the US. They US was looking for ways to expand and none of the British North American colonies wanted to be absorbed by it, so they joined together to defend themselves from the Americans.