Council Building, Quebec City, Quebec.
The Quebec Council is the legislature of the Associated Province of Quebec. It was established in 1782 under the Britannic Design creating the Confederation of North America. Under the Design, the Quebec Council was originally limited to 20 members, but this limit was later lifted. The Quebec Council would periodically meet with other confederation legislatures in Burgoyne in a Grand Council to deal with inter-confederation issues. As established by the Quebec Act of 1774, Roman Catholics in Quebec enjoyed full civil rights, including the right to vote for and stand as members of the Quebec Council. Since the confederations of Indiana and Manitoba had been split off from Quebec by the Britannic Design, Catholics enjoyed full civil rights in those confederations as well.
Despite the existence of the Free Quebec Party, a Francophone party seeking greater autonomy for Quebec, only the C.N.A.'s two main parties, the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party, were able to win election to the Grand Council under the Second Britannic Design of 1842. As late at 1878, the Quebec Council, with 78 members, had no members from purely Francophone parties, only the two older parties and the newly-established People's Coalition. It was not until the 1888 Grand Council elections that Quebec began electing independent members who favored independence. It may have been this, as much as Ezra Gallivan's oratory on the subject, that persuaded the Grand Council to approve the Quebec Plebiscite in 1889.
Although Sobel does not specifically say so, the Quebec Council presumably still serves as a provincial legislature for Quebec as an associated province of the C.N.A.