Queen's Privy Council for Canada

Her Majesty's Privy Council for Canada or simply the Privy

Council (PC), is the full group of personal consultants to the monarch of Canada on state and constitutional affairs. Responsible government, though, requires the sovereign or her viceroy, the Governor General of Canada, to almost always follow only that advice tendered by the Cabinet: a committee within the Privy Council composed usually of elected Members of Parliament. Those summoned to the QPC are appointed for life by the Governor General as directed by the Prime Minister of Canada, meaning that the group is composed predominantly of former cabinet ministers, with some others having been inducted as an honorary gesture. Those in the council are accorded the use of an honorific style and post-nominal letters, as well as various signifiers of precedence.

living current and former federal cabinet ministers, the Chief Justices

of Canada, and all former Governors General. The Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition and leaders or other members of opposition parties are inducted into the Privy Council from time to time, either as an honour or so that sensitive information can be disclosed to them under the Security of Information Act. In addition, it is required by law that members of Security Intelligence Review be Privy Councillors, resulting in all nominees being sworn in if they are not already members. Other persons recommended by the Prime Minister have been sworn into the Privy Council as an honour. Under Paul Martin, Parliamentary Secretaries were sworn into the Privy Council.

Appointees to the Queen's Privy Council must recite the requisite oath:
«I, [name] , do solemnly and sincerely swear (declare) that I shall be a true and faithful servant to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, as a member of Her Majesty's Privy Council for Canada. I will in all things to be treated, debated and resolved in Privy Council, faithfully, honestly and truly declare my mind and my opinion. I shall keep secret all matters committed and revealed tome in this capacity, or that shall be secretly treated of in Council. Generally, in all things I shall do as a faithful and true servant ought to do for Her Majesty»

Provincial premiers do not automatically become Privy Councillors, but have been made members on special occasions (e.g., the centennial of Canadian Confederation in 1967 and the patriation of the Constitution of Canada in 1982). On Canada Day, 1992, the125th anniversary of Canadian Confederation, Gover nor General Ramon Hnatyshyn appointed eighteen prominent Canadians to the Privy Council, including former Premier of Ontario David Peterson, retired hockey star Maurice Richard, and businessman Conrad Black. The use of Privy Council appointments as purely an honour was not employed again until Prime Minister Stephen Harper advised the Governor General to appoint former MP John Reynolds on February6, 2006, along with the new Cabinet. He also advised her to appoint current MP Jim Abbott on October15, 2007.

convene in 1947 to consent to the marriage of Princess

Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II) to Philip Mountbatten, as per the Royal Marriages Act 1772. The Princess' father, King George VI, had offered an invitation for Mackenzie King to attend when the Privy Council of the United Kingdom met for the same purpose, but the Prime Minister declined and held the meeting of the Canadian Privy Council so as to illustrate the separation between Canada's Crown and that of the UK.
The council has assembled in the presence of the sovereign on two occasions: First, at 10:00 am on Thanksgiving Monday of 1957, at the monarch's residence in Ottawa, Rideau Hall. There, Queen Elizabeth II chaired a meeting of 22 of her privy councilors—including her consort, by then Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, whom Elizabeth appointed to the QPC at that conference—and therein approved an Order in Council.
Two years later, the QPC again met before the Queen in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to confirm the appointment of Georges Vanier as governor general. There was originally some speculation that the coming together of the sovereign and her council was not constitutionally sound; however, the prime minister at the time, John Diefenbaker, found no legal impropriety in the idea, and desired to create a physical illustration of Elizabeth's position of Queen of Canada being separate to that of Queen of the United Kingdom.

in 1981 to give formal consent to the marriage of

the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer. According to a contemporary newspaper account, the conference, on 27 March at Rideau Hall, consisted of 12 individuals, including Chief Justice Bora Laskin, who presided over the meeting, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, several cabinet ministers, Stanley Knowles of the New Democratic Party, and Alvin Hamilton of the Progressive Conservative Party.
There, all gathered were informed of the Prince's engagement, nodded their approval, and then toasted their decision with champagne. David Brown, an official in the machinery of government section of the Privy Council Office, told The Globe and Mail that, had the Privy Council rejected the Prince of Wales' engagement, none of his children would have been considered legitimate heirs to the Canadian throne, thus setting up a potential break in the unified link to the crown of each of the Commonwealth realms, in contradiction to the conventional "treaty" laid out in the preamble to the 1931 Statute of Westminster. Following the announcement of the Prince of Wales' engagement to Camilla Parker-Bowles, however, the Department of Justice announced its decision that the Privy Council was not required to meet to give its consent to the marriage, as the union would not result in offspring that would impact the succession to the throne. Prince Charles was himself appointed to the council on 18 May 2014.

sovereign; in the State Dining Room of Rideau Hall, Queen

Elizabeth II is seated at centre, with Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, to her left, and Prime Minister John Diefenbaker at her right; 14 October 1957