732 THE FEDERATIONS AND THE UNION [PART Iv 
views of the Imperial Government, an Ontario Act of 1908 
which inter alia made it illegal for a chartered accountant 
to describe himself as such in the province was disallowed, 
though it was re-enacted promptly in 1910 (c. 79) in identical 
terms, was disallowed and reappears on the statute hooks 
in 1911. A British Columbia Act was also criticized on this 
ground by the Imperial Government in 1905.1 
The Dominion control is in the main exercised through 
formal disallowance rather than by withholding assent or 
reservation, and no detailed instructions for reservation 
have so far been issued, though the Lieutenant-Governor of 
Manitoba asked for them in 1876. The need for reservation 
is not great in a country where there are no long distances 
in time between the provinces and the head-quarters of 
government, and it would seldom be convenient for the 
Lieutenant-Governors to refuse assent straightway. At any 
rate, the Lieutenant-Governors of Ontario and Quebec seem 
never now to refuse assent, and very rarely to reserve : 
indeed, in Ontario disallowance has been unknown. In 
Nova Scotia, on the other hand, the Lieutenant-Governor 
five times in the years 1874-9 refused his assent, and in 
New Brunswick the same course was taken in 1870, 1871, 
and 1872 by one Lieutenant-Governor, and in 1877 and 1879 
by another. Todd ? obtained from the Lieutenant-Governor 
of Nova Scotia his explanations of his action, which was 
due to the desire of ministers to avoid infringing upon the 
sphere laid open to them by the British North America Act. 
On the Bills having passed both Houses, there were found, 
on close examination, serious defects which would have 
rendered it undesirable for him to assent. Otherwise they 
would have been disallowed, an inconvenient proceeding, 
while reservation would have meant throwing on the 
Dominion authorities a duty really incumbent on the Pro- 
vincial Government of seeing that it did not really transgress 
the limit pointed by the constitution. Thus in 187 3, when 
the Lieutenant-Governor of Ontario on advice reserved two 
! See Provincial Legislation, 1904-8, p. 159 ; above, p. 708. 
Parliamentary Government in the British Colonies, pp. 395, 396.