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King's Counsel (KC) is a title conferred on lawyers by the Crown. It is called Queen's Counsel (QC) when the monarch is a queen. Originally awarded to those considered worthy to argue cases for the Crown, in many provinces it has lost its distinction, being awarded to most practitioners of generally 10 years or more standing who conform politically to the government in office. The title can be conferred by either the provinces or the federal government. Duties no longer attach to the rank, which entitles holders to seniority within the profession and to wear a silk Barrister gown.

Comprehensive land claims are modern-day treaties made between Indigenous peoples and the federal government. They are based on the traditional use and occupancy of land by Indigenous peoples who did not sign treaties and were not displaced from their lands by war or other means. These claims, which are settled by negotiation, follow a process established by the federal government to enable First Nations, Inuit and Métis to obtain full recognition as the original inhabitants of what is now Canada. Settlement of these claims comprises a variety of terms including money, land, forms of local government, rights to wildlife, rights protecting language and culture, and joint management of lands and resources. Treaties are constitutionally protected, mutually binding agreements. Those signed by Indigenous peoples between 1701 and 1923 are commonly referred to as historic treaties, and modern treaties refer to those agreements negotiated since then.

The Numbered Treaties were a series of 11 treaties made between the Crown and First Nations from 1871 to 1921. The Numbered Treaties cover the area between the Lake of the Woods (northern Ontario, southern Manitoba) to the Rocky Mountains (northeastern British Columbia and interior Plains of Alberta) to the Beaufort Sea (north of Yukon and the Northwest Territories).

The treaties provided the Crown with land for industrial development and white settlement. In exchange for their traditional territory, government negotiators made various promises to First Nations, both orally and in the written texts of the treaties. These include special rights to treaty lands and the distribution of cash payments, hunting and fishing tools, farming supplies, and the like. These terms of agreement are controversial and contested. To this day, the Numbered Treaties have ongoing legal and socio-economic impacts on Indigenous communities. (See also Treaties with Indigenous Peoples in Canada.)

(This is a full-length entry about the Numbered Treaties. For a plain-language summary, please see Numbered Treaties (Plain-Language Summary.)

Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) is a Québec political party founded in 2011 by Charles Sirois and François Legault, former Parti Québécois (PQ) member of the National Assembly (MNA) and cabinet minister. A centre-right political party, the CAQ merged with the Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ) in 2012. The 1 October election results allowed the Coalition Avenir Québec to form a majority government. Following a decisive victory in the 2022 election, the CAQ formed a second majority government with 90 members of the National Assembly.

Federalism is a political system. In it, the powers of government are split between federal and state or provincial levels. The federal (central) government has jurisdiction over the whole country. Each provincial government has jurisdiction over its population and region. In a true federation, the smaller states are not sovereign. They cannot legally secede. Canadian federalism has swung between centralizing control and decentralizing it. Both levels of government get their powers from Canada’s Constitution. But it includes features that do not fit with a strict approach to federalism.

The Treaty of Paris was signed on 3 September 1783. It concluded the American Revolution. Additionally, it established a boundary between the United States and British North America. The agreement gave the United States lands reserved for Indigenous peoples. This transfer betrayed earlier treaties and alliances between the British and Indigenous peoples.

Quebec is the only province in Canada where francophones make up the majority population. For almost two centuries, many have maintained that preserving the French language was the only possible safeguard for the survival of the Quebec nation (see Francophone Nationalism in Quebec). However, it wasn’t until the Quiet Revolution in the 1960s that governments in Quebec began to actively legislate on the issue. Since 1974, French has been the only official language in the province, although some government services remain accessible in English. Quebec has the distinction of being bilingual on constitutional and federal levels, while officially allowing only French in its provincial institutions.

Introduced by Camille Laurin, Bill 101, the Charter of the French Language (1977), made French the official language of the Government and the courts of Quebec. French became the ″normal, everyday language of work, instruction, communication, commerce and business."

Genocide is the intentional destruction of a particular group through killing, serious physical or mental harm, preventing births and/or forcibly transferring children to another group. The Canadian government has formally recognized certain instances of genocide abroad, including the Armenian genocide, the Holodomor, the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia, the Uyghur genocide and the Rohingya genocide. Within Canada, some historians, legal scholars and activists have claimed that the historical, intergenerational and present treatment of Indigenous peoples are acts of genocide.

Piracy is traditionally defined as the seizure and robbery of craft at sea or in the air. Though piracy had only a small role in Canada’s history, it has been the subject of legendary tales over the years. Pirates traversed the Atlantic coast of the country during the 17th and 18th centuries, plundering and causing mayhem wherever they went. Stories about pirates like Peter Easton and Bartholomew Roberts remain a part of local histories. While maritime piracy is no longer a significant threat in Canada, it remains so in parts of Asia, Africa, South America and Central America. The Canadian Armed Forces have assisted in anti-piracy missions in various parts of the world. In the modern age, piracy has taken on new forms, such as virtual crime and digital theft. Online piracy poses threats to the Canadian people, industries and economy.

In 1970, the federal government undertook a program, known as Project Surname, to assign last names to Inuit in northern Canada. These surnames were to replace the personal disc numbers (see Inuit Disc Numbers) that Inuit had been given by the Canadian government in the 1940s. Some Inuit and non-Inuit viewed Project Surname as a more effective and politically correct system of identification. Others saw it as another instrument of paternalism.

The New Left was an international political movement of the 1960s, mainly of youth and students, which originated in the "Ban the Bomb" movement of the late 1950s. It expanded to include issues such as the Vietnam War, Third World liberation struggles, women's liberation, education, ecology, and popular culture. Critical of the Old Left (Social Democracy and Marxism-Leninism) and its alienating hierarchical, centralized and bureaucratic structures, the New Left proposed local control of the political process, accessibility to political and social institutions and participatory democracy.

The Kanesatake Resistance, also known as the Oka Crisis or the Mohawk Resistance at Kanesatake, was a 78-day standoff (11 July–26 September 1990) between Kanyen'kehà:ka (Mohawk) protesters, Quebec police, the RCMP and the Canadian Army. It took place in the community of Kanesatake, near the Town of Oka, on the north shore of Montreal. Related protests and violence occurred in the Kahnawake reserve, to the south of Montreal. The crisis was sparked by the proposed expansion of a golf course and the development of townhouses on disputed land in Kanesatake that included a Kanyen'kehà:ka burial ground. Tensions were high, particularly after the death of Corporal Marcel Lemay, a Sûreté du Québec police officer. Eventually, the army was called in and the protest ended. The golf course expansion was cancelled, and the land was purchased by the federal government. However, it did not establish the land as a reserve, and there has since been no organized transfer of the land to the Mohawks of Kanesatake.

This is the full-length entry about Kanesatake Resistance (Oka Crisis). For a plain-language summary, please see Kanesatake Resistance (Oka Crisis)(Plain-Language Summary).

The Charlottetown Conference set Confederation in motion. It was held from 1–9 September 1864 in Charlottetown, with additional meetings the following week in Halifax, Saint John and Fredericton. The conference was organized by delegates from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island to discuss the union of their three provinces. They were persuaded by a contingent from the Province of Canada, who were not originally on the guest list, to work toward the union of all the British North American colonies. The Charlottetown Conference was followed by the Quebec Conference (10–27 October 1864) and the London Conference (December 1866–March 1867). They culminated in Confederation on 1 July 1867.

In 1982, Canada fully broke from its colonial past and “patriated” its Constitution. It transferred the country’s highest law, the British North America Act (which was renamed the Constitution Act, 1867), from the authority of the British Parliament to Canada’s federal and provincial legislatures. The Constitution was also updated with a new amending formula and a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These changes occurred after a fierce, 18-month political and legal struggle that dominated headlines and the agendas of every government in the country.

The Gladue case (also known as R. v. Gladue) is a landmark Supreme Court of Canada decision, handed down on 23 April 1999, which advises that lower courts should consider an Indigenous offender’s background and make sentencing decisions accordingly, based on section 718.2 (e) of the Criminal Code.

The Chinese Immigration Act of 1923, known also as the Chinese Exclusion Act, banned the entry of virtually all Chinese immigrants for 24 years. Although migration into Canada from most countries was controlled or restricted in some way, only Chinese people were singled out completely from entering on the basis of race. The four exceptions to the exclusion were students, merchants (excluding laundry, restaurant and retail operators), diplomats and Canadian-born Chinese returning from education in China. The limit on absence from Canada was two years, and the consequence for not returning on time was being barred re-entry. Additionally, every person of Chinese descent, whether Canadian-born or naturalized, was required to register for an identity card within 12 months. The penalty for noncompliance was imprisonment or a fine of up to $500. Though the Act was repealed in 1947, immigration restrictions on the basis of race and national origin were not fully scrubbed until 1967.

Treaty 7 is the last of the Numbered Treaties made between the Government of Canada and the Plains First Nations (see Indigenous Peoples: Plains). It was signed on 22 September 1877 by five First Nations: the Siksika (Blackfoot), Kainai (Blood), Piikani (Peigan), Stoney-Nakoda, and Tsuut’ina (Sarcee). Different understandings of the treaty’s purpose, combined with significant culture and language barriers and what some have argued were deliberate attempts to mislead the First Nations on the part of the government negotiators, have led to ongoing conflicts and claims.

The word reconciliation is used a lot in Canada. It is closely tied with Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples were harmed in many ways in the past. Children were abused in residential schools. Their languages and cultures were taken from them (see Genocide and Indigenous Peoples in Canada). The key goal of reconciliation is to heal the wounds of the past and make reparations for these wounds. Reconciliation also includes making a better future. In Canada, the process of reconciliation has only recently started. The process will continue for a long time.

This article is a plain-language summary of Reconciliation in Canada. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry, Reconciliation in Canada.

The term “Sixties Scoop” refers to the large numbers of Indigenous children who were taken from their homes (scooped) throughout the 1960s. Most of these children were adopted by non-Indigenous families in Canada and the United States. The “Sixties Scoop” has left a lasting legacy on the children, families and communities involved.

This article is a plain-language summary of Sixties Scoop. If you are interested in reading about this topic in more depth, please see our full-length entry, Sixties Scoop.