William Lyon Mackenzie King and the Question of the Institutional Status of Governors-General at the Imperial Conference, 1926

The paper is focused on an analysis of British-Canadian constitutional and institutional relations in connexion with the nation-building process, Mackenzie King’s nationalist tendencies and Canadian efforts to be partly recognised as an independent state during the Imperial Conference of 1926, which marked a new phase in relations among the Dominions and the mother country. The circumstances strengthened Canada’s Prime Minister, Mackenzie King, in his conviction that they had to break free from their obligations arising from common policies, and instead ensure that Ottawa enforce an independent, or at least autonomous, form of foreign policy. Subsequent conflicts of opinion between Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King and Canadian Governor-General Viscount Byng affected the agenda of inter-Imperial relations regarding ensuring a precise definition of the institutional status of Governors-General. Mackenzie King thought that Governors-General should from then on represent the Crown, but not the London government. This change would give Dominion governments direct access to the King. Previously, Governors-General in the Dominions had been viewed more as “communication intermediaries” between Britain and local representatives rather than direct representatives of the King.