For many, the election of the provincial Liberals led by Jean Lesage in June 1960 marked the beginning of the Quiet Revolution in Quebec. The arrival of l’équipe du tonnerre (the Thunder Team) injected a new dynamic into constitutional issues.

In December 1961, federal Minister of Justice Davie Fulton made public a proposal to “patriate” the Canadian Constitution, which was still an Act of the British Parliament. Fulton proposed not only bringing the Constitution home, but also the addition of an amending formula. The latter would protect the sections of the Constitution by requiring a prescribed degree of consensus in order to amend them.

The French-speaking institutional network was outraged by this proposal. Led by the Ordre de Jacques Cartier, the Association canadienne-française d’éducation de l’Ontario (ACFEO), the Fédération des Sociétés Saint-Jean-Baptiste du Québec, the Fédération des Sociétés Saint-Jean-Baptiste de l’Ontario, and the Ligue d’Action nationale all denounced the lack of recognition of Canada’s duality, the omission of French-language minority rights in education, and the limited increase in French-language services in the public sector. All felt that substantial changes had to be made to guarantee certain gains for French-speaking minority communities. Morever, they believed that a revision of the distribution of powers between the federal government and the provinces was necessary.

In June 1963, the ACFEO issued a declaration that essentially echoed these ideas. However, it was released in a particular political context. Although the institutional network seemed unanimous, internal dissension erupted in the spring of 1963. The Fédération des Sociétés Saint-Jean-Baptiste du Québec and the Ligue d’Action nationale were in favour of strengthening the Quebec provincial state, while organizations outside Quebec, such as ACFEO, wanted to promote the traditional constitutional demands of French Canada.

The document bears witness to the mobilization of the institutional network at a time when constitutional issues were becoming central to the political landscape. On the eve of the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, it also attested to the tensions running through the French-Canadian institutional network. The latter was increasingly divided between two conceptions of French Canada: one cultural and non-territorial; the other defined around Quebec. These tensions came to the fore during the Estates General of French Canada.