During January and February, 1868, McGee was seriously ill in Montreal, but in March he was back in Ottawa for the opening of parliament. The crucial issue of the period was the inclusion of Nova Scotia in the federation. A delegation of Nova Scotians headed by the redoubtable Howe had gone to Britain to obtain the support of British statesmen in the endeavour to release their province from the federation. To neutralize their influence by stating the counter case, the Canadian government in March sent over Tupper. To the Nova Scotian anti-unionists--and they constituted a majority of the representatives of the province--the little energetic doctor was anathema. With painstaking bitterness, they assailed his appointment. On the evening of April 6, Dr. Parker, a Nova Scotian representative, made a personal attack on Tupper, demanding his recall. He declared that he was "utterly disqualified for being a representative of the Dominion, and sending him only deepened the disaffection of the sister province of Nova Scotia". In reply to Parker, McGee declared that the motion to recall Tupper was delivering Confederation a stab in the dark. "If he had been in earnest in wishing to give the new system a fair trial, he would have said: I do not think Mr. Tupper was the best choice, but since he has gone I wish him all success for the sake of the union." In impassioned words which show how poignantly his own bitter struggle with Fenianism was on his mind, he argued that Tupper should not be judged by the transitory ill-esteem in which he was held by his countrymen. "We should not make a mere local or temporary popularity the test of the qualification of a public servant. He who built on popularity built on a shifting sand. The man who showed he was ready to suffer for his principles as well as triumph with his principles was far beyond comparison with the mere popularity hunter. It would be a base spirit to sacrifice the man who had sacrificed himself for the sake of the union." No attentive parliamentarian who heard these words could have foreseen that in little more than an hour McGee himself was to be sacrificed for his opinions.