Quebec (Province). Executive Council. Land Committee : With a return to peace secured in the signing of the Treaty of Paris (3 September 1783) and the additional Instructions issued in the same year for the permanent settlement within the Province of the refugee loyalist population, the attentions of the Executive Council turned increasingly to issues of land as the government was called upon to address a growing number of specific land petitions. From a procedural and records-keeping perspective, the Executive Council meeting of 17 February 1787 is important as it marks the point at which that body began to document its minutes of land business in separate minutes. The immediate explanation for this innovation is not found in the minutes themselves. Neither are the actual procedures by which the Executive Council approached its two parallel streams of work explained. The evidence does not suggest that the Council met in separate meetings for its land and state work but, rather, that two separate agendas were presented at each meeting at which there were both land and state matters to be discussed. The proceedings and decisions were then recorded in different minute books. While there are occasional duplicate entries in both sets of minutes, that is the exception.
However, the line of distinction between "land" and "state" issues was not always clearly maintained in the two sets of minutes. Matters relating to particular land grants, leases and associated topics are documented in the land minute books. Land-related issues of a broad or policy nature, on the other hand, were generally considered to be "state" matters and are found documented in the "state" minute books. As a result, one finds records of such topics as land-granting policy, the acquisition and distribution of Indian lands, and military reserves (Ordnance lands transferred to civil control) documented in the state minute books.
The procedures by which the Executive Council carried out its land-related work were, in many respects, similar to those followed in the prosecution of state business. Submissions, such as land petitions, were placed before the Executive Council and proceedings were recorded in minutes by the Clerk of Council and his assistants who also maintained the various papers and reports presented before Council in support of the land business transacted. Much of the detailed work was assigned to committees whose members reported to the Executive Council and whose deliberations and recommendations were entered into the minutes. The decision on a specific petition was frequently inscribed as an endorsement on it. When the decision was extracted from the minutes to serve as authorization for subsequent action, it took the form of an order-in-council.
Prior to 1787, much of the detailed work of investigating individual land petitions had been assigned to temporary committees of the Executive Council, appointed as the need arose. The minutes of 1787 show the transition toward the establishment of a more permanent "Land Committee" of the Executive Council to which such matters could be routinely referred. Presumably the increasing flow of land petitions necessitated the regularization of a process which had, heretofore, been handled in a more ad hoc manner than could now be sustained. A Land Committee now began to hold regular weekly meetings. The "First Report of the Land Committee" was recorded in Executive Council land minutes of 4 December 1787 and subsequent reports were presented and entered into the minutes regularly thereafter.
The assigning to a permanent committee of responsibility to investigate the detail of land petition claims and to make recommendations to Council was doubtless intended to speed up a cumbersome land grant process. This change in internal procedure did not, however, remove ultimate decision-making responsibility from the full Executive Council since final approval of Land Committee recommendations still rested with it. Moreover, the existence now of a permanent Land Committee did not mean that all land matters or even all individual land grant petitions were automatically referred to it. Indeed, a number of more general land issues as well as petitions were not referred but, rather, considered by committee of the whole and the recommendations of the committee of the whole reported to the Executive Council for its decision. In other cases, Council decided land matters without reference to either the Land Committee or committee of the whole.
With the establishment of district land boards (first announced late in 1788 but not fully appointed or operational until the following year), some of the detailed adjudication of petitioner claims shifted from the Land Committee of Council to the local boards. However, even these efforts to streamline the land-granting procedures did not remove the Executive Council and its Land Committee from the process. Although these land boards were permitted to assign a single 200-acre lot, any claim for additional land still had to be forwarded to Council for approval. Under this system, the Land Committee retained a responsibility to review larger claims and recommend a course of action to Council and also acted, in the words of historian Lillian Gates, "as a sort of court of appeal from the land boards". Right to the end of 1791, the minutes of the Executive Council reflect its considerable continuing involvement in land matters.
