Events took place in 1926 that would set the course for a dramatic shift in the role of the federal viceroy and ultimately result in the creation of a distinct monarchy for Canada. Until that point, the governor general remained a representative in Canada of the British government, but was still able to exercise the Royal Prerogative over the Canadian prime minister without orders from the King in his British Council back in Westminster. When the governor general at the time, the Lord Byng of Vimy, did just that and forced Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King to resign in what came to be known as the King–Byng Affair, the latter was, once reappointed following that year's general election, motivated to raise at the 1926 Imperial Conference questions about the relationship between the Dominions and the United Kingdom. The first ministers were mostly receptive, and, following the close of the meeting, the Balfour Declaration was issued, wherein it was declared that the Dominions of the British Crown were to be considered equal to the United Kingdom, as Mackenzie King had wished, and the Governor General of Canada, as with all the other governors-general of the empire, would be the direct representative of the King in person, rather than a diplomatic channel between the Canadian and British governments.