What was Lord Durham's Report?

Lord Durham's Report on the Affairs of British North America was a report submitted by John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, on January 31, 1839 to the British government. Durham had been appointed Governor General of British North America in May 1838 with extensive powers to investigate the rebellions of 1837 to 1838 and recommend reforms. The report's two principal recommendations were the union of Upper and Lower Canada (intended to assimilate French Canadians into a British majority) and the introduction of responsible government (a ministry accountable to the elected assembly). The report is one of the most consequential documents in Canadian constitutional history.

Durham (1792 to 1840) was a leading British Whig politician known as 'Radical Jack' for his support of the Reform Act of 1832. He arrived in Quebec on May 29, 1838 and remained in British North America for about five months before resigning over a controversy about his treatment of Patriote prisoners (Durham had banished some prisoners to Bermuda without trial, which exceeded his constitutional authority). His advisers and researchers included Charles Buller, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and Lord Brougham.

The report's analysis of Lower Canada was famously harsh and influential. Durham concluded that he had found 'two nations warring in the bosom of a single state', a struggle 'not of principles, but of races' between French and English Canadians. He recommended assimilating French Canadians into English-speaking society on the model of the British conquest of Wales and Scotland. To accomplish this assimilation, he proposed uniting Upper and Lower Canada under a single legislature where the English-speaking majority of Upper Canada (plus the English minority of Lower Canada) would outnumber French Canadians. He also proposed specific measures including English as the only language of government and English-style municipalities and schools. These proposals produced lasting French-Canadian resentment.

The report's recommendation of responsible government was equally consequential. Durham argued that the colonial constitutional structure (in which the Lieutenant-Governor's Executive Council was independent of the Legislative Assembly) was fundamentally unworkable. He recommended that the Governor's Executive Council be drawn from the majority party of the elected Assembly, on the model of British cabinet government. This principle of responsible government was the foundation of self-governing Canadian democracy. Britain implemented the union of Upper and Lower Canada through the Act of Union of 1840 (in force February 10, 1841). Responsible government was implemented in Nova Scotia in February 1848 and the Province of Canada in March 1848 under Governor General Lord Elgin and the Baldwin-La Fontaine ministry. Durham's assimilationist predictions failed: French-Canadian identity survived the union and emerged stronger by Confederation.