Parti canadien

The Parti canadien (paʁti kanadjɛ̃) or Parti patriote (paʁti patʁiɔt) was a primarily francophone political party in what is now Quebec founded by members of the liberal elite of Lower Canada at the beginning of the 19th century. Its members were made up of liberal professionals and small-scale merchants, including François Blanchet, Pierre-Stanislas Bédard, John Neilson, Jean-Thomas Taschereau, James Stuart, Louis Bourdages, Denis-Benjamin Viger, Daniel Tracey, Edmund Bailey O'Callaghan, Andrew Stuart and Louis-Joseph Papineau. The British Government established two oligarchic governments, or councils, to rule what is today Quebec and Ontario, then called Lower and Upper Canada. Upper Canada ruled by the Family Compact and Lower Canada ruled by the Chateau Clique. Both groups exerted monopolistic, uncontested rule over economic and political life. The councils were corrupt in their nature by strengthening their dominance by personal use of funds which eventually led to infrastructural problems around Upper and Lower Canada, including land distribution, poor road conditions, and lack of education funding. Continuous frustration between the councils and the legislative assemblies over language differences and Lower Canada's discontent for treatment of French problems led to the beginning of the Parti Canadien. English merchants and politicians in Canada pushed for an assemblage of the Canada's, which would lead to the assimilation of the French. Louis-Joseph Papineau rallied the people of Lower Canada to sign a petition against the proposition. Papineau later sailed to Britain to present the petition to the British Government and to rally for the rights of the people of Lower Canada, only to have the issue heard with little action to follow. Later, the British Parliament passed the Canada Land and Tenures Act which abolished the feudal and seigneurial systems in British North America. The act left property rights of many land owners in limbo and created much confusion and conflict in Lower Canada where the French Civil Code was in action, and thus infuriating the French people of Lower Canada even more.