Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - History

History

Many of the rights and freedoms that are protected under the Charter, including the rights to freedom of speech, habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence, have their roots in a set of Canadian laws and legal precedents sometimes known as the Implied Bill of Rights. Many of these rights were also included in the Canadian Bill of Rights, which the Canadian Parliament enacted in 1960. However, the Canadian Bill of Rights had a number of shortcomings. Unlike the Charter, it was an ordinary Act of Parliament, which could be amended by a simple majority of Parliament, and it was applicable only to the federal government. The courts also chose to interpret the Bill of Rights conservatively, only on rare occasions applying it to find a contrary law inoperative. The Bill of Rights did not contain all of the rights that are now included in the Charter, omitting, for instance, the right to vote and freedom of movement within Canada.

The centennial of Canadian Confederation in 1967 aroused greater interest within the government in constitutional reform. Such reforms would include improving safeguards of rights, as well as patriation of the Constitution, meaning the British Parliament would no longer have to approve constitutional amendments. Subsequently, Attorney General Pierre Trudeau appointed law professor Barry Strayer to research a potential bill of rights. While writing his report, Strayer consulted with a number of notable legal scholars, including Walter Tarnopolsky. Strayer's report advocated a number of ideas that were later incorporated into the Charter, including protection for language rights. Strayer also advocated excluding economic rights. Finally, he recommended allowing for limits on rights. Such limits are included in the Charter's limitation and notwithstanding clauses. In 1968, Strayer was made the Director of the Constitutional Law Division of the Privy Council Office and in 1974 he became Assistant Deputy Minister of Justice. During those years, Strayer played a role in writing the bill that was ultimately adopted.

Meanwhile, Trudeau, who had become Liberal leader and prime minister in 1968, still very much wanted a constitutional bill of rights. The federal government and the provinces discussed creating one during negotiations for patriation, which resulted in the Victoria Charter in 1971. This never came to be implemented. However, Trudeau continued with his efforts to patriate the Constitution, and promised constitutional change during the 1980 Quebec referendum. He would succeed in 1982 with the passage of the Canada Act 1982. This enacted the Constitution Act, 1982.

The inclusion of a charter of rights in the Constitution Act was a much-debated issue. Trudeau spoke on television in October 1980, and announced his intention to constitutionalize a bill of rights that would include fundamental freedoms, democratic guarantees, freedom of movement, legal rights, equality and language rights. He did not want a notwithstanding clause. While his proposal gained popular support, provincial leaders opposed the potential limits on their powers. The federal Progressive Conservative opposition feared liberal bias among judges, should courts be called upon to enforce rights. Additionally, the British Parliament cited their right to uphold Canada's old form of government. At a suggestion of the Conservatives, Trudeau's government thus agreed to a committee of Senators and MPs to further examine the bill of rights as well as the patriation plan. During this time, 90 hours were spent on the bill of rights alone, all filmed for television, while civil rights experts and advocacy groups put forward their perceptions on the Charter's flaws and omissions and how to remedy them. As Canada had a parliamentary system of government, and as judges were perceived not to have enforced rights well in the past, it was questioned whether the courts should be named as the enforcers of the Charter, as Trudeau wanted. Conservatives argued that elected politicians should be trusted instead. It was eventually decided that the responsibility should go to the courts. At the urging of civil libertarians, judges could even now exclude evidence in trials if acquired in breach of Charter rights in certain circumstances, something the Charter was not originally going to provide for. As the process continued, more features were added to the Charter, including equality rights for people with disabilities, more sex equality guarantees and recognition of Canada's multiculturalism. The limitations clause was also reworded to focus less on the importance of parliamentary government and more on justifiability of limits in free societies; the latter logic was more in line with rights developments around the world after World War II.

In its decision in the Patriation Reference (1981), the Supreme Court of Canada had ruled there was a tradition that some provincial approval should be sought for constitutional reform. As the provinces still had doubts about the Charter's merits, Trudeau was forced to accept the notwithstanding clause to allow governments to opt out of certain obligations. The notwithstanding clause was accepted as part of a deal called the Kitchen Accord, negotiated by the federal Attorney General Jean Chrétien, Ontario's justice minister Roy McMurtry and Saskatchewan's justice minister Roy Romanow. Pressure from provincial governments (which in Canada have jurisdiction over property) and from the country's left wing, especially the New Democratic Party, also prevented Trudeau from including any rights protecting private property.

Nevertheless, Quebec did not support the Charter (or the Canada Act 1982), with "conflicting interpretations" as to why. The opposition could have owed to the Parti Québécois leadership being allegedly uncooperative, because it was more committed to gaining sovereignty for Quebec. It could have owed to Quebec leaders being excluded from the negotiation of the Kitchen Accord, which they saw as being too centralist. It could have owed to provincial leaders' objections to the Accord's provisions relating to the process of future constitutional amendment. They also opposed the inclusion of mobility rights and minority language education rights. The Charter is still applicable in Quebec because all provinces are bound by the Constitution. However, Quebec's opposition to the 1982 patriation package has led to two failed attempts to amend the Constitution (the Meech Lake Accord and Charlottetown Accord) which were designed primarily to obtain Quebec's political approval of the Canadian constitutional order.

While the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted in 1982, it was not until 1985 that the main provisions regarding equality rights (section 15) came into effect. The delay was meant to give the federal and provincial governments an opportunity to review pre-existing statutes and strike potentially unconstitutional inequalities.

The typography of the physical document pictured here, and still distributed today, was typeset by Ottawa's David Berman intentionally in Carl Dair's Cartier typeface: at the time the most prominent Canadian typeface, having been commissioned by the Governor-General as a celebration of Canada's centenary in 1967.

The Charter has been amended since its enactment. Section 25 was amended in 1983 to explicitly recognize more rights regarding Aboriginal land claims, and section 16.1 was added in 1993. A proposed Rights of the Unborn Amendment in 1986–1987, which would have enshrined fetal rights, failed in the federal Parliament. Other proposed amendments to the Constitution, included in the Charlottetown Accord of 1992, were never passed. These amendments would have specifically required the Charter to be interpreted in a manner respectful of Quebec's distinct society, and would have added further statements to the Constitution Act, 1867 regarding racial and sexual equality and collective rights, and about minority language communities. Though the Accord was negotiated among many interest groups, the resulting provisions were so vague that Trudeau, then out of office, feared they would actually conflict with and undermine the Charter's individual rights. He felt judicial review of the rights might be undermined if courts had to favour the policies of provincial governments, as governments would be given responsibility over linguistic minorities. Trudeau thus played a prominent role in leading the popular opposition to the Accord.