Supremacy of Parliament replaced With Supremacy of the Charter
OTTAWA, April 16, 2001 (LSN.ca) – Canadians are currently being inundated with media propaganda celebrating 20 years of implementation of Pierre Trudeau’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The mostly liberal media are reporting poll results indicating that 82% of Canadians feel the Charter has been good for Canada. The Charter has been a feel good exercise since its inception with few Canadians questioning how it could add to the already substantial rights and freedoms that Canadians enjoyed before the charter.
Unfortunately, the implications of the radical change to Canadian democracy and society that the deceptively named charter has brought about is still not understood by ordinary Canadians. Parliament has in many ways been replaced by an unelected, unaccountable court elite that has naturally used the power to change and make law that the Charter granted them. In addition, Canadian governments have frequently by-passed legislatures and used special interest groups, funded by government programs such as the Court Challenges Program, to impose radical social change via Charter legal challenges.
The CBC reported today that Alan Borovoy, of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association stated about the Charter, “You had the striking down of school prayer and religious instruction in the public schools in Ontario”. He continued “We had been fighting that program for years in the political arena and had made some progress, but it was a judicial decision that finally knocked it out of the curriculum. Those cases never even went to the Supreme Court of Canada, those decisions were made by the Ontario Court of Appeal.” The abortion law was struck down on Charter arguments, gay rights have been drastically advanced via charter arguments and a general climate of legal, political and social intolerance for traditional religious and moral principles has been growing thanks to manipulations of the charter.
See the Charter Revolution and the Court Party – Interim https://www.lifesitenews.com/interim/2001/april/22mortonknopfreview.html The Failure of Parliament and the Rise of Judicial Activism – Gwen Landolt https://www.lifesitenews.com/interim/1999/dec/12thefailure.html Pierre Trudeau – Father of Canada’s Permissive Society https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2000/oct/001003a.html The Court Challenges Program Goes on and on – REAL Women https://www.realwomenca.com/html/newsletter/2002_Jan_Feb/Article_10.html