Why we tossed them

It is a pity that "property right" is not protected!

A badly flawed "charter".

And theres my personal favorite, entitlements and all:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsorship_scandal

Chretien. Bleh. Somewhere a cemetery is missing its idiot.

brought back in a damn pine box, that flawed document was

in the USA they adjust their constitution about once every 7 years, in kananda, not once in 30 years. And then there is the fact that all the liberally defined "special" groups get special mention in the main body of this flawed document, and so not within reach of change, is another big flaw. Burn the damn thing, with kretien and the "shiney pony" tied to it

Any grief anyone suffers from the charter is simply the lack of political will to over-ride it. Quebec has no such qualms and freely craps on its Anglos. It's true that the courts have gone stupid with the charter but the legislatures are still sovereign.

"They have a culture of grievance over it, not looking at the facts."

The facts are this: Trudeau's Charter turned British subjects endowed by God with the liberties of freeborn Englishmen who enjoy the protection of the Queen, into "citizens" with only so many "human rights" as the philosopher-king saw fit to give them. The Charter was made impossible to amend, Trudeau being sure his constitution would be good for a thousand years. Now that's arrogance.

English Canada's premiers went along with the sellout for the sake of a photo op. The Queen by the Grace of God of Canada, who surely knew better, acquiesced at the insistence of her British ministers. Margaret Thatcher, to her eternal shame, saw that Trudeau got what he wanted just to be rid of him, the same way she sold Rhodesia to Robert Mugabe just to get Rhodesia off the front pages of the British papers.

Celebrate what? Why on earth or out of it is Harper supposed to celebrate the selling of Canada's birthright? To please the likes of Jean Chretien? Another fact: Chretien has had his reward, just like Trudeau.

Wake me when they repeal it and I can go back to having property and self defense rights. Then I'll celebrate.

I'll never get over the fact that minority groups have supremacists' rights over the majority, I'll never get over the fact that provinces negate the Charter using HRC to abuse citizens. The Charter is great if you are an illegal Canadian or a Canadian of convenience, if you were born here and are white you have limited controlled rights.

The Charter is a violation of the individual rights of Canadian citizens and was set up to first, entrench bilingualism and thus, Quebec domination, into Canadian government; and second, to disempower free dissent and individual rights.

As noted, most of the Charter focuses on the entrenchment of bilingualism into Canadian governance. This is a violation of reality, for less than 20% of Canadians are, even after 30 years of this Rule, bilingual. It therefore rejects the majority of Canadian citizens as being able to participate in their own governance.

Second,it specifically demotes and indeed, ignores individual freedoms and fundamental rights. By fundamental rights I mean those that are basic to 'being human' and have nothing to do with cultural values. The Charter specifically sets up group 'rights', which are always cultural, as privileged over these individual rights.

Therefore, rather than treating and viewing Canadians on an individual basis, the Charter lumps them into identity blocs - homogeneous sets differentiated by single characteristics such as religion, gender, ethnicity. These blocs are privileged in legal and governance treatment and supercede individual rights.

The G&M had an insane column by Ibbitson on how the Charter was viewed as a 'model for the world', surpassing, he claimed, the defunct US Declaration of Independence and Constitution. Insane.

The Charter, as I said, had two agendas. The first was to set up a false government class, The Bilinguals, empowering Quebec as dominant in Canadian governance. The second was to disempower the individual by submerging them within identity blocs. It's a travesty against freedom.

No expert on it, but a constitution that has a "not withstanding clause", which basically means that the government can override anything in the constitution any time as long as they invoke the not withstanding clause, isn't worth the paper it's written on. I also believe the charter says something about our rights have to be demonstrated to be "reasonable". I was in my teens when the charter was created, I thought it was a crock then and I still do.

The Charter sucks, but it's still an improvement over no Charter even if a small improvement. See "Britain" for how badly we could be. It should be noted that Trudeau did want private property rights in there but he was blocked by provincial leaders.

and..speaking of the NEP,Suzuki was just on cbc saying we NEED the NEP!! He will be on again with Evan later.BTW,did any of you catch Solomon's grovel/slobber-fest with Chretin yesterday? Evan refers to him as 'The Right Honorable Jean Chretien'..yet it is always just 'Harper' when referring to current PM.

Oh, go choke someone, Chretien!

cbc just said,after slamming PMSH for NOT properly celebrating the charter,that the Libs are using this as a 'fundraising tool!' For $300,you too can participate in their little party.

You have the right to get stuffed, should you run afoul of politically correct official tolerance guidelines as set out in Section 1.

As demonstrated, Alison Apoplectic REDford is frightened of 'Conscience Rights' which are enumerated in Section 2(a). Imagine a politician afraid of enumerated individual rights....?!

Which is simply shorthand for suggesting the elite will determine what is or isn't against your conscience. This from a UN-steeped rights legal beagle.

Thus your 'individual rights' are suborned to the mob collective rights as set out in Section 1.
In summary, you have no rights save those the elite grant you.

Otherwise, it makes for a great decoration or as Alison REFford would have it, your conscience rights are written on toilet tissue.

http://scc.lexum.org/en/1988/1988scr1-30/1988scr1-30.html

"The deprivation of the s. 7 right in this case offends freedom of conscience guaranteed in s. 2(a) of the Charter. The decision whether or not to terminate a pregnancy is essentially a moral decision and in a free and democratic society the conscience of the individual must be paramount to that of the state. Indeed, s. 2(a) makes it clear that this freedom belongs to each of us individually. "Freedom of conscience and religion" should be broadly construed to extend to conscientiously-held beliefs, whether grounded in religion or in a secular morality and the terms "conscience" and "religion" should not be treated as tautologous if capable of independent, although related, meaning. The state here is endorsing one conscientiously-held view at the expense of another. It is denying freedom of conscience to some, treating them as means to an end, depriving them of their "essential humanity"."

Thus Alison Apoplectic REDford is quite comfortable in denying your 'essential humanity' if you object to the procedure at hand and not a few others who view abortion aquiescence as a political litmus test of so called public acceptability.

Much success with the Charter...you will need it.

Alison Apoplectic REDford's approach is about as subtle as the "Obama-Nation(tm)" approach to the abridgement of 1st Amendment rights in the US.

Cheers

Hans Rupprecht, Commander in Chief

1st Saint Nicolaas Army
Army Group “True North”

We have given it 30 years. Is Canada better than it was under the BNA act? Thats all you have to9 ask yourself. Me, I think not. No property rights anymore, no individual rights. Just State run slave rights.

The fact that a number of politicians have since commented that they didn't forsee the changes that would come to Canada because of the new Constitution/Charter simply proves that they didn't do enough thinking ahead of time before they signed the damn thing. Now we'll all have to live with the harm that it has done to Canada.

As for not celebrating its signing what's so special about 30 years. Does the left want to declare it an annual national holiday, I know the big unions would love that idea since it would mean another paid day off.

The only document I recognize was signed in 1205
by I believe King John, on the Fields of Runneymede.

The Liberals want to throw a party for their charter and nobody else wants to attend. Boo Hoo,get over it,but they can't,they're going to run around the house and make everyone miserable. That's what a Liberal does.

Screw that ahole cretin, the damn charter and that stupid liberal flag too. And while I'm a it, screw you suzuki. Shove that nep up your ass with the rest of your bs. Man I hate lefties with a passion.I am so f'ing sick of these dicks pushing their crap on me all the time. Let's get the damn war started. The left has been itching for a fight for a long time. I for one am ready to kick some ass. Sorry for the rant. Sort of.

Trudeau's charter was never ratified by the public..
None of the Premiers had mandates to sign the re-patriation act..
In fact, Trudeau never had a mandate to re-patriate it either..

Chretien and Liberals can choke on this..
The Conservatives under Harper won't be having any parties for the constitution, I suspect he feels about it as I do..
It was forced upon us, without any regards for possible consequences from it, it was Trudeaus ..swan song.. and nothing else.

NO celecbrations until the public has had the chance to pass judgement on its validity by voting (for) or (against) it.
JMO

Didn't foresee, robw? That what they told you? Anybody with eyes to see and ears to hear could have foreseen what was to come in Canada as in Rhodesia. The politicians just didn't care. Their big priority was getting invitations to the right cocktail parties. When catastrophe struck their plan was to be as far away as possible from the nest they'd fouled, enjoying the expatriate lifestyle in New York or London or Sydney.

In public they'll pretend to mourn the way things used to be. In private they'll sip fine spirits bought with the birthright of the "Rhodies" and "rednecks," and laugh themselves sick at your expense.

There is a poll on

http://www.ctvnews.ca/

regarding the 30th ann. on the charter of rights. Give your opinion.

There is so much to hate in Pierre's Charter it's difficult to know where to start... although most of it's flaws have already been stated on this thread... ET spells out it's real purpose quite well... I would just add that Pierre's Charter is another "Liberal" top down social engineering tool that was never allowed to be vetted by Canadians, like say Meech Lake was... Pierre's Charter was simply imposed without the public being consulted... To call Pierre's Charter a democratic document is utter bullshit... Pierre's Charter is about as democratic as his OLA or the NEP. A complete and utter distortion of the history of Canada. Chretin can kiss my arse, and thank his lucky stars he's not in jail! F' Pierre's Charter!

Another poll on CBC asking whether Harper has the right to speed up environmental process. That one could use a little help.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/inside-politics-blog/2012/04/power-politics-question-of-the-day-15.html

I think the Liberal 'celebration' of the Charter is a political tactic to divert attention from Mulcair and the NDP; the Liberals are desperate to keep from sliding into oblivion.

As for the 'notwithstanding or override clause', Section 33, that concerns minuteman, this was, to my understanding, an attempt to preserve the power of the people in making their own legislation. It protects parliamentary supremacy over a Constitution. An example would be 'what if' the Supreme Court, using Section 15 as its support, ruled in favour of same sex marriages. A provincial legislature could use this clause to reject that law in its domain - even though marriage is a federal task. What if the Courts ruled, again using Section 15, in favour of Affirmative Action based on ethnic background. A province could reject this.

But the basic Bill of Rights of 1960 included a similar version, empowering the legislature over the written document.

LAS - how is the Charter an improvement? Is it better than the Bill of Rights of 1960? That Bill of Rights included property rights but Trudeau's Charter certainly doesn't. The Charter privileges identity blocs, reduces and denies individual power, and drastically reduces Canadian participation in their own govt by the bilingual rule.

Exactly right. as Sean M points out, this Charter is the antithesis of democracy. Not only in how it was produced but its content, with that privileging of bilingualism and its denigration of individual rights, is contrary to democratic rights.

For example, right now in Quebec, a small town with 26% of its population as anglophone, has a bilingual local newspaper. The Quebec language police are investigating, for it is illegal in Quebec, by its infamous Bill 101, to have such bilingual public papers. But, heh, with the francophone population in Canada as LESS than 23%, we are still, by Charter law, required to be a bilingual government. Hmmm.

"The Charter sucks, but it's still an improvement over no Charter..."

The main reason for bringing in The Charter was so the left could over ride the Civil Rights laws. Once they did that they were free to attack and abuse citizens from all angles.

As for the 'notwithstanding or override clause', Section 33, that concerns minuteman, this was, to my understanding, an attempt to preserve the power of the people in making their own legislation.

That's exactly why the notwithstanding clause has to go: democracy sucks. It's mob rule.

The Charter is not really the Big Evil Thing everyone here keeps making it out to be. It's just mostly inconsequential. Prior to the Charter, however, the protections against police abuses were very weak. They're still weak but better.

At CBC: sorry, we cannot find the page you requested. I'll bet they know I arrived there via SDA and blocked access. Is that possible?

Also, those stupid REAL Women, Ted Byfield and other pro-lifers vociferously spoke out against the Charter in the early 1980s and predicted many of the problems that have come to pass.

Prophets are never honoured in their own country. Before SUN News and the internet, these Canadian realists were shut out of the debate and the public was “protected” from their unacceptable views by the consensus media, which is all we had in those days.

The CTV poll looked pretty good: NO to celebrating the Charter: 48%; YES: 52%.

I’ll Google CBC myself and try to vote.

So, LAS, to which protected special interest group do you belong?

Be specific about how the Charter has improved the lives of Canadians and document your opionion.

LAS rejects democracy; he calls it 'mob rule'. That is, the notion of government 'of the people, by the people, for the people', which is the essence of democracy - he rejects this.

So, tell us, LAS, which form of government do you support?

Umm Las?

I notice that folks are somewhat less free today then they were 30 some years ago.

BTW. If police want to abuse you, they abuse you. If a politician says don't touch that group, they don't touch that group.

Police are at the mercy of their political masters make no mistake about that. They do what their masters tell them and that is all.

Police - serve and protect and democracy are fairy tales told to keep people in line forking over their labours with a deluded smile.

That charter would be much worse if it had not been for the Right Honorable Eric Neilson amending it when the Turdo thugs were caught with their pants down over a budget leak. Eric shredded Turdo everyday the HOC sat because Eric was very intelligent and because he was an honorable man who valued Liberty. Eric, unlike Turdo, (the coward - later a chicken hawk re: Quebec) was a decorated RCAF pilot during WWII.

Mark Steyn tarred and feathered that 'scap of paper' (charter) in the clip with Michael Coran.
Lookout and Sean M. with most of SDA did an honorable job right here.

Get that BNA Act back out Mr. Harper. This 30 yr anniversary of PET's backward idea, as Revnant Dream said above, is a reason to celebrate the end of it. We gave it a test run, it failed. Back to the tried and true BNA Act.

Your link, Lance, is priceless!

So, tell us, LAS, which form of government do you support?

Constitutional republic.

Getting rid of the Charter is a non-starter. Future work should talk of 'completing' and 'perfecting' the Charter. Our current PM lacks the strategic insight and will never have the popularity for this project. But if a popular conservative ever got the power, that's how he should frame replacing bilingualism with private property rights.

@ The Grey Lady at April 17, 2012 8:16 PM
If police want to abuse you, they abuse you. If a politician says don't touch that group, they don't touch that group.
Police are at the mercy of their political masters make no mistake about that.

Hope more people get it.

The dispute of the worth of the 82 amendment of the BNA has three main positions that more or less some strongly base their like or dislike on.

First there are those that should be referred to as closet separatists / fair-weather federalists. This group based mostly around the political class in Quebec still retain the view of Canada as two founding nations in a power sharing agreement, the conditions under which laws should require the approval of both "national" legislatures prior to be accepted as Canadian. Their big grievance is that the charter (flawed or not, that point is moot to their argument) was signed into law without getting their agreement first. The catch to getting their agreement however was that Quebec be given a veto over any new federal legislation into perpetuity...lack of obtaining that is apparently proof that Canada doesn't work.
The next major group are those that although they hold the view of Canada as two founding nations, they regard the country as a monolithic structure controlled from the center. They do feel that Quebec should have special status, but just so long as it doesn't take any power away from Ottawa. They view the charter as a perfect document that was created gifted to us by Trudeau. They also tend toward suprise when the courts do something that they never expected, like read in to the charter something not explicitly stated.

Then the last group. They are the folks that know the document has some good and some really bad facets to it. They also know that the country is not made up to two nations and that a certain province that was never in our history ever been a nation, colony yes, province by act of British Parliament, but never a nation. Based on that fact, there is no need for said province to be granted special status under the constitution, nor that we need a big central government to control our lives.
Point is that this last group has stopped buying the constitutional shell game long ago and we don't care to make note of the day the BNA act had a clause added.
The one question this last group ponders is there buried deep in our law books, some authority in the executive powers to relieve supreme court justices from the bench?

LAS - a democracy can be a constitutional republic! The USA is both.

The term 'constitutional republic' defines the infrastructure of government; namely, that it has an elected head of the government and this government operates within the rule of laws of a Constitution.

The term 'democracy' refers to how decisions are made within the infrastructure (in this example, a constitutional republic).
Democratic decision-making means that decisions are decided by a majority vote within a legislature.
In this case, the majority vote is constrained within the rule of law and a constitution.

You are making an error in suggesting that a constitutional republic is not also a democracy.

Now, kindly prove that Harper 'lacks the strategic insight'. Specific analysis please.

You still haven't answered how the Charter is 'an improvement'.

The notwithstanding clause is the only saving grace of the charter. It ensures that parliament remains supreme over the judicial branch. Very important concept because of course the judges are not elected and are uncountable.

What we need is for a government to finally get the balls to use the notwithstanding clause at the federal level. I know Quebec uses it but it's never been used federally. It should not be seen as something to never use. A perfect example is the phony right for prisoners to vote. That "right" should be taken away immediately by using the notwithstanding clause.

Cripes. Chretien here, Broadbent a few threads down.

If you're going to be dragging out dead politicians for words of wisdom, can we have something with a bit less stench and a lot more substance? Reagan or Churchill would do fine.

I am a patriotic Canadian but our charter stinks to the high heavens.

As for Chretien, please hurry up and die.

Sean @ 3:22 pm, and a village regained one.

ET, thanks for weighing in on this.

A judge who was the speaker at my oldest daughter's high school grad in about 1987 called the Charter the equivalent of unemployment insurance for lawyers.

ET @ 7:14 p.m.: "As for the 'notwithstanding or override clause', Section 33, that concerns minuteman, this was, to my understanding, an attempt to preserve the power of the people in making their own legislation. It protects parliamentary supremacy over a Constitution. An example would be 'what if' the Supreme Court, using Section 15 as its support, ruled in favour of same sex marriages. A provincial legislature could use this clause to reject that law in its domain - even though marriage is a federal task. What if the Courts ruled, again using Section 15, in favour of Affirmative Action based on ethnic background. A province could reject this."

ET, Section 33 (the so-called notwithstanding clause) cannot be invoked with regard to Section 15. It can only be invoked with regard to Section 2 ("fundamental rights") and Sections 7-14 ("legal rights").

Note that the right to a fair trial is in Section 11(d).

William in Ajax at 6:44 pm. is correct. Not the Prime Minister nor any of the ten Premiers or the two territorial leaders had a mandate from the citizens to negotiate and then repatriate the Constitution with its Charter of Rights. Canadians should organize and launch a class action suit against these people and/or their estates. Didn't the Supreme Court say that Quebec separatists should be able to get what they want on moral grounds even if they couldn't legally, provided the numbers were there? Logically then, if enough Canadians repudiate such a poorly thought out document, would/should it not then be void?

nv53 thanks for your clarification, but I'm puzzled. All that I've read about the notwithstanding clause includes Section 15.

"The constitutional notwithstanding clause(1) set out in section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (hereinafter referred to as the Charter of Rights or the Charter) has been controversial since its emergence from a November 1981 Federal-Provincial Conference of First Ministers....This legislation contained a section 33 override clause (in this case affecting Charter of Rights guarantees of freedom of expression (section 2(b)) and equality rights (section 15))."

The above is from the government site on this clause. Also below, same site:

"A number of rights entrenched in the Charter are not subject to recourse to section 33 by Parliament or a legislature. These are democratic rights (sections 3-5 of the Charter), mobility rights (section 6), language rights (sections 16-22), minority language education rights (section 23), and the guaranteed equality of men and women (section 28). Also excluded from the section 33 override are section 24 (enforcement of the Charter), section 27 (multicultural heritage), and section 29 (denominational schools) – these provisions do not, strictly speaking, guarantee rights."

I'll put the link to my above quotes in a separate post, as the filter seems to dislike links. But the debate over the notwithstanding clause is really a very important one, both in its principles and also, in what it allows to be overridden.

http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/bp194-e.htm

Read it through - and see the arguments about the 1960 Bill of Rights.

I think what is important in the Charter and the notwithstanding debate is the principle of innate or fundamental rights versus social/cultural norms and desires.

As we can see from the documents, the notwithstanding clause rejects fundamental or individual rights and privileges social or group norms. It does this by allowing sections 2 and 15, which deal with individual rights, to be overridden by the norms and desires of cultural groups. This is a basic difference between, for example, the US and Canada. The former focuses on fundamental rights which are always individual; Canada focuses on the group rights of a cultural collective, ie, multiculturalism.

This is, I feel, a basic flaw in the Charter - as well as its major focus on embedding bilingualism into the federal government.

The argument about the Charter's insisting, by its notwithstanding clause, on the dominance of an elected legislature over an appointed court is, I feel, persuasive.

My views against the Charter are not about this clause but about the total rejection of fundamental individual rights, the concomitant focus on privileging the cultural habits of identity groups, and its bilingual enforcement.

Putting aside the pros and cons of the Charter itself, doesn't 30 strike you as a dumb anniversary choice for this sort of thing anyway?

Fifty years? Maybe.

One hundred years. Sure.

But 30?

The only conclusion we can possibly make is that M. Chrétien wanted to have a self-congratulatory adoration party while he was still around.

JJM - I completely agree, the thirty-year anniversary is very suspicious. It doesn't make sense in itself.

My own view is that it's a ploy by the Liberals to counter the surge in popular interest in the new NDP leader Mulcair.

So, the Liberals chose to focus on what they have 'taught' Canadians, in every school curriculum, is the prime, key, noble, outstanding action of Canadian history - the Charter - and to define it, very clearly, via Chretien who is associated with the Liberal glory, as a Liberal Achievement.

It's all about politics. Nothing else.

LAS - a democracy can be a constitutional republic! The USA is both.
- ET.

Not anymore, it's not! Not for about a century.
The US is a "constitutional republic" only in the abstract, a occupational hazard for professors as you well know, ET!

I'll say it again:
Absent sound money (100% reserve gold standard money) constitutions are pieces of paper with infinitely pliable words written upon them.