Three weeks after this Conference, Prime Minister Trudeau announced that he would ask the two Houses of Parliament to pass a Joint Address to Her Majesty asking for British legislation to patriate our constitution and to amend it with a Charter and a new amending formula.

In retrospect, we can see that this Federal initiative gave rise to two basic questions.  First, was legal legitimacy still achievable through a Joint Address and United Kingdom legislation?  Secondly, while the past had shown that federal plus provincial consent was a sufficient condition for political legitimacy, was provincial approval a necessary condition?  In my second lecture I will examine these questions and try to answer them, not as a matter of opinion but as a matter of history.