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The Case against the Canadian Charter of Human Rights
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Abstract
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- Information
- Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 2 , Issue 3 , September 1969 , pp. 277 - 291
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- Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1969
References
1 Trudeau, Pierre Elliot, A Canadian Charter of Human Rights (Ottawa, 1968).Google Scholar
2 Constitutional Conference, First Meeting, Feb. 1968 (Ottawa, 1968), 255.
3 “Needs, Wants, and Political Legitimacy,” this Journal, I, 3 (September 1968), 242.
4 “An Inquiry into the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights,” Canadian Bar Review, XXXVII (March 1959), 79.
5 The only head-on discussion of this matter I found is in Charles S. Hyneman, with the collaboration of Gilbert, Charles E., Popular Government in America (New York, 1968)Google Scholar, chaps. 15 and 16. Hyneman's discussion is centred about negro protest.
6 There is a vast literature here. I have found most useful as it relates to education, Blausten, Albert P. and Ferguson, Clarence Clyde Jr., Desegregation and the Law (2nd ed., New York, 1962).Google Scholar
7 And obviously discrimination against persons of both races who would otherwise qualify but who are in excess of explicit or other quotas necessary to achieve the required mix of blacks and whites.
8 A Survey of the Contemporary Indians of Canada, part I (Ottawa, 1966), chap. 1.
9 “When shall we extend the protection of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to machines and mutants?” Lasswell, Harold D., The Future of Political Science (New York, 1963), 5.Google Scholar
10 Trudeau, Pierre Elliot, The Constitution and the People of Canada (Ottawa, 1969), 60.Google Scholar
11 In speaking of the charter the then Minister of Justice said of the 1968 constitutional conference: “I wish to make it clear that… there is no suggestion that the federal government is seeking any power at the expense of the provinces. We are stating that we are willing to surrender some of our power to the people of Canada, and we are suggesting that the provincial governments surrender some of their power to the people in the respective provinces” (p. 271). There is some point in Premier W. A. C. Bennett's response to this measure: “… even an incomplete study of these proposals reveals that we are being asked to discard the constitutional philosophy of 1867 and embrace the constitutional philosophy of 1776…” (p. 129). For a lucid conservative account of the Canadian constitutional tradition which gives an indication of how far Mr Trudeau has moved out of the mainstream, see Cheffins, B. I., The Constitutional Process in Canada (Toronto, 1969)Google Scholar, particularly chaps. 1 and 7.
12 Constitutional Conference, 1968, p. 327.
13 “Mr. Trudeau's Bill of Rights: Disadvantages,” Canadian Forum (March 1969).
14 A thoughtful and moderate case for judicial activism is made by Strayer, B. L. in Judicial Review of Legislation in Canada (Toronto, 1968).Google Scholar
15 Although this is an extreme instance of the way judges in the Anglo-Canadian tradition reason about public issues, see the judgment of the Judicial Committee in the so-called “Persons” case. Edwards v. A.-G. for Canada (1930) AC 124. The point at issue was whether women were “persons” under sec. 24 of the British North America Act and thus eligible or otherwise to become members of the Senate of Canada.
16 The Supreme Court of the United States has had a degree of success here and some of their most momentous civil rights decisions have been formed in layman's language. See particularly Brown v. Board of Education, 139 F. Supp. 468 (1955), 176.
17 For a history and analysis of resistance to the Supreme Court of the United States see Hyneman, Charles S., The Supreme Court on Trial (New York, 1963)Google Scholar, part I.
18 For a trenchant criticism of Canadian legal education see the speech given to the fall convocation of Osgoode Hall Law School on October 18, 1968, by the Minister of Justice, the Honourable John Turner: “Law school curricula nourish the commercial sector. Business law constitutes the core; poverty law and the rights of the dispossessed i.e. the poor, the mentally ill, the illegitimate child and related categories are relegated to the penumbra if considered at all. Indeed, it appears at times as if the curricula of the modern law school have been drawn up by the local chamber of commerce.” Mimeo, p. 4.
19 For an account of the difference between the Canadian, and American tradition which is particularly relevant in the light of the present movements for constitutional reform in Canada, see Morton, W. L.The Canadian Identity (Toronto and Madison, 1961)Google Scholar, particularly 110–14.
20 I remember the half-serious explanation given by an American professor of constitutional law about the real locus of sovereignty in the United States. He asserted that in the short run at least the constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is. But to whom does the court respond? To a relatively small group of legal scholars who write for the major law journals.
21 Hyneman, The Supreme Court on Trial.
22 Trudeau, The Constitution and the People of Canada, 78. This unhappy suggestion was being concocted almost precisely at the time when President Johnson's appointee as Chief Justice of the United States was running into such heavy opposition in the Senate, with much of the case against Mr Justice Fortas based on his opinions as a member of the Supreme Court.
23 For an account of these matters in Ontario see Ontario Royal Commission of Inquiry into Civil Rights, Report no. 1, vol. 2, sec. 3, “Extra-Judicial Employment of Judicial Personnel.” It is interesting to note the willingness of some Ontario judges and magistrates to accept remuneration for services under conditions the commissioner believed to be clearly contrary to law.
24 See Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Matters Relating to One Gerda Munsinger (Ottawa, 1966). For a journalistic account of the Munsinger affair see Newman, Peter C., The Distemper of Our Times (Toronto, 1968)Google Scholar, chap. 28.
25 For a discussion see Laskin, Bora, Canadian Constitutional Law (3rd ed., Toronto, 1966), 970–6.Google Scholar For a comprehensive discussion of the bill see Tarnopolsky, Walter S., The Canadian Bill of Rights (Toronto, 1966).Google Scholar
26 For a lucid discussion of the present confused situation in regard to judicial standing on Canadian law, see Strayer, Judicial Review, 96–129.
27 Trudeau, The Constitution and the People of Canada, 80.
28 “Some Obstacles to Democracy in Quebec,” reprinted in Federalism and the French Canadians (Toronto, 1968), 103–23.
29 For an account of these events see Tarnopolsky, The Canadian Bill of Rights, 47–52.
30 Russell, “Mr. Trudeau's Bill of Rights.”
31 A Canadian Charter of Human Rights, 11.
32 Peter Russell has pointed out the presence of elaborate reproductions of the Diefenbaker Bill of Rights in schools maintaining rigid bans on student political activity. The well-known empirical study of political attitudes in two very different American communities by Prothro, James W. and Grigg, Charles M. showed almost complete agreement on the abstract principles of American democracy but disagreement on their implications for particular situations. “Fundamental Principles of Democracy,” Journal of Politics, 22 (1960), 276–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
33 The Constitution and the People of Canada, 20.
34 Pearson, L. B., Federalism for the Future (Ottawa, 1968).Google Scholar “…we have proclaimed our belief that the rights of people precede those of governments,” 8.
35 The Spirit of Liberty and Other Writings, collected with an introduction and notes by Dillard, Irving (New York, 1953), 164.Google Scholar
36 Ibid., 101.
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