Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Charter a quarter of a century in Canada

The Rt. Hon. Beverley McLachlin, the 17th Chief Justice of Canada, first Canadian or Albertan woman to do so and served as well as the Administrator of the Government to (performing the duties of the Governor General, including giving royal assent to the Civil Marriage act, effectively legalizing same sex marriage in Canada), spoke out recently . This is after she had previously said. Knowing full well the new powers this court has gained since the inception of the Charter, .

English Charter Marriage. Chief Justice Rt. Hon. Bora Laskin, the Jewish born native of Fort William, University of Toronto-Osgoode Hall graudate and known for his superior academic record, presided over the most landmark case of all. That being Trudeau's 1981 attempt to unilaterally patriate the British North America act, without the consent of the provinces, by the powers that be in Ottawa within that reference to the court. He would rule that unilateral action maybe technically constitutional, it violated the convention that has emerged since Confederation and would not be accepted by Canadian society in general. This forced the Prime Minsiter to begin a new round of negotiations with all those provinces, which resulted in the 1982 Charter, being agreed to by all provinces with one exception (thanks to the 1981 Kitchen Accord between Jean Chrétien, Roy Romanow and Roy Mcmurtry, or the Night of the Long Knives, and the dealmaker Section 33 that led to its acceptance as the constitutional deal). English Marriage Charter, which ironically enough, would be brought back up later that same night and on the same topic I might just add.

Actually, this brings to point why the Charter needs additional written conventions to provide structure and guidance over those unwritten biased judgements given by the judiciary, as any and all judges, from the local justice of the peace to the national Chief Justice. After watching The Agenda in Studio 2 with Steve Paikin TVO last night, I was caught like a deer in headlights as my own and your Ontario Chief Justice Mcmurtry spoke frankly on his role in bringing the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms into being, with such pride, swagger and bravado in believing "sincerely that [he's] done the right thing." But slowly I asked myself, did he not see the failings of this document he proudly acknowledged of which was partly his brainchild, then a soft jostle between Patrick Monahan, the dean of Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, and Grant Huscroft, associate dean academic with the Faculty of Law at the University of Western Ontario, explained it away (really too bad Wilfrid Laurier University didn't have a law school) as . A living tree in a ditch over a road, active in growing, never thinks to restrict itself if even there is a chance it will be cut back for reasons of public safety. One such tree may be cut back and down, for the safety of the public, to the point it now longer grows and starts dying rather, restricted from its previous active state so no accident or detrimental event can happen because of it. Without a literal intent within the letter of the law by its court, with its clear division and constitutional interpretation, any society goes from being conservatively specific to liberally broad in spirit and denies precisely the fullness of those rights and freedoms without their corresponding principles of responsibility and fairness.