[sandworm101]

1931. Not 1940s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Westminster_1931

>>Most of the remaining colonies in North America – everything north of the United States with the exception of Newfoundland – were merged into a federal polity known as "Canada" in the late 1860s and early 1870s. Canada was termed a "dominion", a term previously used in slightly different contexts in English history, and granted a broad array of powers between the federal government and the provincial governments. Australia was similarly deemed a dominion when it federated in 1901, as were Newfoundland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the Irish Free State in the first decades of the 20th century.

>> No Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom passed after the commencement of this Act shall extend, or be deemed to extend, to a Dominion as part of the law of that Dominion, unless it is expressly declared in that Act that that Dominion has requested, and consented to, the enactment thereof.

In that language was/is Canadian independence from britain.

[verve_rat]

And NZ adopted the Statute of Westminster in 1947, so was on the same footing as Canada with respect to claiming the "first to the top" title.