Since the Trudeau government repatriated (brought back to Canada) our Constitution in 1982, there has been considerable confusion as to what that constitution is. Because the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was created at the same time and in a sense, rolled together with the goings on with the constitution, it leads people to believe that it is really part of our repatriated constitution. I once asked a well known lawyer, Soloman Friedman, if the Charter could take away any of our rights that were in our original British North America Act, that was based on the Magna Carta and his reply was “no, it cannot remove any rights, it can only give you more rights”. That seems to hold well with section 26 of the 1982 Constitution where it says; 26. “The guarantee in this charter of certain rights and freedoms shall not be construed as denying the existence of any other rights or freedoms that exist in Canada. That seems pretty clear, so how do we end up with judges using the ‘not withstanding clause’ in the Charter, that basically say that we can remove an individuals rights for the good of the community at large.
This country was built on the rights of the individual being protected against government and the community at large. This contradiction in the charter makes it unconstitutional at best or treason at worse and the courts and informed politicians need to stand up against any further erosion of our rights by removing the ‘not withstanding clause’ from this charter.
This is the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta and through the decades many governments have tried to remove the rights that we were granted, but the only one to succeed was Trudeau and his Charter.