I represented the Province of Canada, and did research for Canada East.
I feel the biggest most important issue we had was keeping governmental power. Coming into the negotiations the Province of Canada had the most land, the biggest population, and the most governmental power. The best way for us to keep power going into the confederation was to get representation by population. We knew it was going to be hard to convince other colonies to agree to have a government represented by population because we were really the only colony that benefited.
The strategy my group came up with to get representation by population was to pay big percentages in the Army, Navy, and Railroad costs. We also tried to show the other colonies how representation by delegation did not benefit our colony at all because we would always get over powered by smaller colonies.
Yes, we made some compromises during the negotiation phase. We originally wanted our choices of where the capital was (In the Province of Canada) but compromised with the capitol being in Quebec because it is closer to the centre of all the colonies.
No, most of our propositions pass, but having representation by population was the biggest thing we wanted which we didn’t end up getting.
I wish that our proposition to have representation by population passed. We wanted the right to expand more into western into Canada which also didn’t pass. I think we needed to negotiate more with the other colonies about these ideas, and show have we didn’t benefit at all from having representation by delegation especially if we didn’t get more seats then the smaller less enhanced colonies.