Preface

In 1977, the Privy Council Office made a submission to the Lambert Commission on Financial Management and Accountability. One of the four papers in that submission dealt with the principles and evolution of responsible government in Canada. The document, entitled "Responsibility in the Constitution", has been used as a basic reference work within and around the Privy Council Office ever since.

This paper is being re-issued with the aim of making it more widely available to those interested in the history and foundations of our system of responsible government and of the principles and conventions that underlie it. I hope this volume will be as useful to a new generation of readers as it has been to us over the past sixteen years.

Clerk of the Privy Council and
 Secretary to the Cabinet
June 1993

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