Section Thirty of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms - Function

Function

As the government of Canada puts it on one of its websites, this means that "The Charter applies to the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in exactly the same way as it does to the provinces." Hence, section 30 is particularly important in regard to section 3, 4, 5, 6 and 23 rights. Since section 6 refers to rights to "move to and take up residence in any province" and to "pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province," section 30 is applied so that section 6 also guarantees rights to move to and pursue work in the territories of Canada. Likewise, section 30 extends section 23's guarantee of minority language educational rights for minority language groups in the provinces to minority language groups in the territories.

Section 30 also guarantees that territorial governments are bound by sections 3 to 5, which themselves only explicitly refer to provincial governments. Hence, those in the territories will have the right to vote or run in territorial elections (section 3), territorial governments cannot operate for longer than 5 years without an election (section 4), and territorial governments must sit at least once a year (section 5).

The other rights in the other sections of the Charter are also valid and enforceable in the territories, perhaps through section 30 but mainly through section 32, which states that the Charter applies to the federal government. The authority of the territorial governments is derived from the Canadian Parliament.

The content of section 30 dates back to the original draft of the Charter, which was published in October 1980.