In a submission to the Supreme Court, the federal government is asking the court to neuter part of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The case before the court is a challenge to Quebec’s Bill 21, the law on secularism in the province.
The province has of course used the notwithstanding clause for the bill as they have done several times over the decades with other laws. The notwithstanding clause is also known as section 33 of the Charter, it was a key of the package that got the Charter and the constitutional changes of 1982 passed.
Now, the federal government under Mark Carney is going to ask the courts to limit, in some ways remove this power from elected legislatures while reserving this power for judges.
“The constitutional limits of the s. 33 power preclude it from being used to distort or annihilate the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Charter, or to reduce them to des peaux de chagrin, that is, to shrivel them beyond recognition, if not transform them into mere legal fictions,” reads the submission.
Section 1 of the Charter allows judges to override Charter rights with no checks and balances, no recourse for citizens. Section 33 allows legislatures to override rights in a limited way and the citizens can vote out governments that they find abusive.
None of the people you will hear from on this issue ,who support the Carney government’s move, will ever ask that judges have their ability to override rights curtailed in anyway.
Expect several provinces, if not all, to oppose this attempt to change the Charter via judicial decree.
The Charter would not even exist today if not for the Notwithstanding Clause. It is an absolute must in a Confederation.
“The Charter would not even exist today if not for the Notwithstanding Clause.”
True. Which is why our Canadian Charter of Rights is a joke….if you only have those ‘rights’ until a judge or government official decides that you don’t, then you never had them at all.
Dude. Notwithstanding your right to private property, the government can tax it away from you by passing a bill through parliament.
Notwithstanding your right to walk around freely, the government can make you stay home. They’ve done it twice now in five years.
Notwithstanding your right to your own personal liver in your own personal body, the government can take it away from you by passing a bill through Parliament. The “Take Joey’s Liver” law, third reading. They haven’t done that one yet, but I’m sure some of them are thinking about it.
The Charter is a fantasy. This is just the Feds being annoyed at the PQ for angering a #LieberalProtectedGroup.
The charter would not exist today if the voters had a chance to vote on it.
I’d rather trust the provinces than the judges in this country (not that the provinces are super trustworthy)!
A new FREE Alberta and Sask. Will be writing their own Charter of Rights. EXIT now. Before it’s too late.
Inalienable rights are very inconvenient for managers. They make everything more difficult. Why can’t the peasants just put their heads down and work harder to pay their taxes? So troublesome!
It’ll be interesting to see how this goes. We already don’t have any rights, thanks to the Notwithstanding Clause, but #CarkMarney proposes that even the pretense be abandoned so he can pander to the Protected Group of the Week.
Meanwhile 25% of Canadians are struggling to get food on the table. Genius move, boys.
You do not enjoy inalienable Rights. You are not a sovereign US Citizen. You are a Subject of the Crown. You enjoy certain revocable privileges bestowed to you by the Crown. You will know your station in life. You will be obedient. You will be loyal. That is all, carry on.
The Crown supersedes all other things. The Government and its organs are subservient to the Crown. This includes the Constitution which of course is trumped by the Crown. The Judiciary and all other aspects of the Canadian governmental system are loyal to, and answer only to the Crown. These are the facts, and they are not in dispute. Govern yourselves accordingly.
Whichever decision pushes the provinces to separate from the sinking ship of tier 2 Canada, is what I hope the SCOC decides to affirm.
The gov’t which grants you a right, is the gov’t which takes it away.
The way forward is for gov’t to NOT have a role in that, and enshrine their inability to take it by means the same as the US Constitution does… though there are a couple of issues which could be added to it as well.
Mark Levin, “The Liberty Amendments” for example.
After or when AB/Sask separate from our overseers including the royal inbreds across the pond, will be our chance at real freedom. There’s no real chance of freedom with their anchor securing us to the fold.
“Govern yourselves accordingly” …
God save our gracious King!
Long live our noble King!
God save the King!
Send him victorious,
Happy and glorious,
Long to reign over us,
God save the King!
Anything that can be overwritten with a simple POGG (Peace, Order and Good Government) ruling from Canada’s ermine bedecked judicial betters isn’t a charter of rights it’s simply a bromide for hockey helmet wearing, “Elbows Up”, short bussers who walk among us and who can quote chapter and verse from it as if they have something akin or perhaps even better than the U.S. Constitution.
As a British Columbian and once a proud member that wore a uniform that had Canada on both shoulders I have to ask. Why are we still part of this obscenity?
GO WEXIT
” … the federal government is asking the court to neuter part of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
That’s a head-scratcher. I mean, how do you neuter a steer?
The same way you turn a homosexual male into a transexual drag queen.
I believe we have the Q and A of the week.
I just want to know how you neuter something that has already been nutted, like a steer … or the charter.
public school 1958 or so.
its drop-the-drawers time for the boys, gotta make sure both testicles have descended. oops why is so-and-so taken out of the line?
it was long looooooong after l figured out why the middle leg exam’
ie the plumbing is configured correctly.
to this day what l cant figure out why the h-e-hockey sticks something so bloody personal had to be done in plain view of e-v-e-r-y-o-n-e there
The federal government and the central Canadian chattering class have always resented the notwithstanding clause in the constitution. They want the federal government to have unrestricted power through court judgments.
The notwithstanding clause gets in their way because it allows the provinces to ignore judges rulings in section 33 areas for 5 years and more if renewed. More bluntly it stops Liberal federal governments, federally funded activists and judges appointed by the prime minister from imposing their social activism on unwilling provinces…which is why provincial governments insisted on the notwithstanding clause be included before they would sign the constitution. Even in the 1980s provincial premiers could see that the federal government uses the courts to implement their political policies when voters in many provinces don’t support those political policies.
It is a typically bizarre Canadian scenario where the federal Liberals are attempting to use the Supreme Court to neuter the very clause that the provinces explicitly insisted be included in the constitution to resist the federal government and the courts. If the Liberals want to amend the constitution then the only proper way would be to use the constitution’s amendment formula but they know that would fail. There is no way they could get least two-thirds of the provincial legislatures representing at least 50% of the population of the provinces to agree to make the Liberals desired changes to the notwithstanding clause
Carney needs less obtuse advisers, apparently. They just created another selling point for the secession movement(s). They, accidentally, highlighted another focus in that regard.
A valid Constitution and Bill of Rights doesn’t lean on the whim of the Government or the United Nations. Leftists always see a Constitution as a living document, and pervert it through the bought and paid for Courts. From the Leftist perspective, this is a stupid mistake that they can’t see. As usual, they are looking specifically at the present, and not the future.
Shithole.
Every iteration of a Liberal government is worse than the previous one.
A court that deems itself capable to write in provisions of a “constitution” will also deem itself capable of erasing provisions.
(See Vrend vs. Alberta)
“In a submission to the Supreme Court, the federal government is asking the court to neuter part of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.”
Jamie gets it right.
How can they neuter a thing which is already devoid of meaning?
Dear Leader’s Supreme Puppets have already ruled;” If our government is in a stated State of Panic,suspending the “Charter of Rights and Freedoms is A OK”.
Privileges not Rights. Not freedoms.
So all who talk of That “Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms”, are liars or fools.
It is the list of privileges that Statist Can Ahh Duh might permit, if you obey.
Even self defence is being stripped away from us..
Cause these parasites are so much smarter than us.
Heh the Dread Covid Theatre is now revealed as a classic self defence scenario.
Turns out the “helpers” really were out to kill.
When they tell you who they are..believe them.