The Charter

"The fifth edition had to be substantially revised to reflect the impact of recent Supreme Court of Canada bellweather decisions in Grant and the companion decisions in Harrison and Suberu. These decisions require a new approach to the meaning of detention for Charter purposes and to the remedy of exclusion of evidence under section 24(2) of the Charter. Much of the voluminous prior jurisprudence on section 24(2) over the past 27 years relating to the meaning and consequences of conscripting the accused in violation of the Charter is now of little moment. New clarifications and new questions are identified."--Pub. desc.

At the end of the Second World War, a growing concern that Canadians' civil liberties were not adequately protected, coupled with the international revival of the concept of universal human rights, led to a long public campaign to adopt a national bill of rights. While these initial efforts had been only partially successful by the 1960s, they laid the foundation for the radical change in Canadian human rights achieved by Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the 1980s. In Toward the Charter Christopher MacLennan explores the origins of this dramatic revolution in Canadian human rights, from its beginnings in the Great Depression to the critical developments of the 1960s. Drawing heavily on the experiences of a diverse range of human rights advocates, the author provides a detailed account of the various efforts to resist the abuse of civil liberties at the hands of the federal government and provincial legislatures and the resulting campaign for a national bill of rights. The important roles played by parliamentarians such as John Diefenbaker and academics such as F.R. Scott are placed alongside those of trade unionists, women, and a long list of individuals representing Canada's multicultural groups to reveal the diversity of the bill of rights movement. At the same time MacLennan weaves Canadian-made arguments for a bill of rights with ideas from the international human rights movement led by the United Nations to show that the Canadian experience can only be understood within a wider, global context.

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms has transformed Canadian life since it was adopted as part of the Canadian constitution in 1982. The Charter requires judges to make decisions on a wide range of issues that affect all Canadians. In doing so, the courts play a major role in citizens’ lives. Because of the Charter: - The law against prostitution was struck down. - The Harper government"s treatment of child soldier Omar Khadr was found to violate his rights. - Vancouver’s Insite safe injection site was kept open, overriding a federal government decision requiring it to shut down. Ian Greene is a political scientist, and his focus in this book is to highlight the many significant ways the Charter shapes Canadian life. After providing background on the creation and implementation of the Charter, he describes its impact on a wide range of issues — aboriginal affairs, voting rights, freedom of religion, the right to strike, and language rights, among others. Greene describes key decisions in these areas and comments on the often-conflicting views of the judges deciding them. Even though the Charter is a legal document, debated by lawyers and decided by judges, Greene approaches his subject with an eye on the political impact the Charter has on governments and ordinary citizens. Public discussion of the Charter is often framed around the question of who should make these important decisions — elected politicians or unelected judges. This book provides a clear understanding of how the Charter works and how ordinary citizens have succeeded — or failed — to win change from the courts. It offers information that people on every side of public discussion can use regarding the role of the Charter in Canadian life.

Written by two of Canada s leading constitutional scholars, no other Canadian book provides such an accessible yet thorough and objective account of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The authors survey the manner in which Canadian courts have come to terms with a constitutionally entrenched bill of rights, focusing on the decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. The purpose is to explain the Charter, its interpretation by the courts, and its practical application. The text has been thoroughly updated to reflect Charter jurisprudence since publication of the third edition in 2005. Notable among those developments are significant changes to the way the Supreme Court has approached the interpretation of equality rights, constitutional remedies, and most recently the rights of the criminally accused.