The True Story of Confederation Cannot Be Properly Understood Unless the Language of Outraged Taxpayers Is Given Prominent Place; Much Like the USA in 1787, Canada Needed a New Constitution Because It Needed a New Tax Deal

Modern Canada, like the three countries that shaped it, France, Britain, and the United States, began with a tax revolt. However, where they had successful, transformative "country" revolutions against high-spending "court" governments, Canada's founding tax revolt actually consolidated the "court" party's hold on power, and for that reason it has passed largely unnoticed in the writings of historians. But the true story of Confederation cannot be properly understood unless the language of outraged taxpayers is given prominent place. Tax protests can be an efficient way to organize political dissent and demand accountability. But for mid-century Canadian reformers, it was axiomatic that politics was about the money. Much like the United States in 1787, Canada needed a new constitution because it needed a new tax deal. This chapter outlines the causes, negotiations, and effects of that deal, focusing on the view from the "United Province of Canada," the colony that would become Ontario and Quebec.

--E.A. Heaman, Tax, Order, and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867-1917, Carleton Library Series 240 (Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2017), 21.