Sir John G. Bourinot Compares the Provincial share of Powers to the powers of the American States

I. Distribution of Legislative Powers. In the distribution of the legislative powers entrusted to the general parliament and the local legislatures respectively, the constitution makes such an enumeration as seems well adapted on the whole to secure the unity and stability of the Dominion and at the same time gives every necessary freedom to the several provinces in the management of their local and municipal affairs. In arranging this part of the constitution, its framers had before them the experience of eighty years' working of the federal system of the United States, and were able to judge in what essential and fundamental respects that system appeared to be defective.¹ The doctrine of state sovereignty had been pressed to extreme lengths in the United States, and had formed one of the most powerful arguments of the advocates of secession.