Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms just turned 40, so I thought I’d write about how it works and why it matters.
I can’t imagine Canada without the Charter.
It was proclaimed on April 17, 1982, when I was in high school and it outlines human rights and freedoms available to all people living in Canada, subject to limits that are “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
The five freedoms protected under the Charter are:
- Freedom of conscience and religion
- Freedom of the press and media communication
- Freedom of association
- Freedom of thought, belief, opinion, and expression, and
- Freedom of peaceful assembly
The six categories of rights in the Charter are:
- Democratic rights
- Legal rights
- Mobility rights
- Equality rights
- Official language rights, and
- Language education rights
The Charter forbids discrimination based on colour, sex, age, religion, and physical or mental disability. It also affirms language rights and already‐existing Indigenous and treaty rights. It has influenced the creation and interpretation of some of Canada’s key laws and policies, including the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, the right to equality for people with disabilities, the right to fundamental justice when claiming refugee status, the right to be taught in French, and the right to access safe injection sites. Here are some important Charter-related cases.
Section 23 of the Charter protects the education rights of speakers of French and English in minority contexts. These rights apply as long as “numbers warrant”. What numbers are required isn’t defined in the document, so the Courts have adopted a “sliding scale” approach that accounts for different contexts and circumstances, from case to case and place to place.
The Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages maintains summaries of key Court decisions and events relating to language rights here.
Image: By Marc Lostracci, Wikimedia Commons
Catherine Fisher, blogger
