Section Six of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - Subsections 6(3) and (4)

Subsections 6(3) and (4)

Section 6(2), the rights of citizens and permanent residents to move to and pursue work in any province, has a number of limits provided by sections 6(3) and (4). Section 6(3) apparently recognized and affirmed laws that limited rights to pursue certain careers for persons who had recently entered the province. As Professor Peter Hogg remarked in 1982, when section 6 came into force, some of the laws upheld by section 6(3) could even be discriminatory towards a person based upon where he or she had moved from; this discrimination only becomes unconstitutional when it is "primarily" the reason for the limits on section 6(2) rights. Section 6(3)(b) addresses rights to social services, suggesting that a denial of services to persons who have newly arrived should be "reasonable."

Subsection 6(3) thus requires a comparative analysis to determine if there is discrimination. This may be a difficult analysis to perform given that one can pursue work in a number of different ways, but in general a newcomer will be compared with those who have lived in the province for longer. Laws and regulations that appear neutral on their face, but in fact are meant to allow discrimination in practice or have discriminatory consequences, are also considered to violate section 6. This is the same approach the Supreme Court has taken to equality rights in section 15 of the Charter.

Section 6(4) was added to the Charter in November 1981 to appease the government of Newfoundland and Labrador, making it possible to allow Newfoundlanders who had been in the province for longer a better opportunity to find work in offshore oil than newcomers. This limit allowing for disparity in opportunity applies anywhere else where unemployment in the province is worse than in the country as a whole.