I have been reading the news reports of you and your Government’s latest efforts announced yesterday, April 19, 2021 concerning the Wuhan Virus. It is difficult to get any written material directly of what you said but only press reports of what you are alleged to have said. Your own website does not carry your comments, for example. And the travel section of your website on restrictions talks of regions, not health regions, although the press talk of health regions. One should not have to wait for such important issues to be clarified now thirteen months in.
Additionally, Government pronouncements on the facts have been limited. These often talk of cases as if they were all sick people, and I have not see the numbers of total acute care beds in the Province and total ICU beds. I have had to look elsewhere to find such information. What percentage of cases end up as hospitalization, what is the fatality rate for various age groups? What is the recovery rate? There seems to be no balance of all the facts but rather a concentration on the dire straits we are all in. Surely some context is necessary.
Sadly, you have followed the mantra of so many places where lockdowns have been implemented and have ignored the efforts of jurisdictions who have refrained from lockdowns or implemented mild ones.
If you had looked at this information, you would have seen that places like Florida have been successful without resorting to extreme measures as you and your Government are now implementing.
But what is most disconcerting for me are two things:
A. You and your Ministers have paid little attention, if any, to providing citizens with any type of cost benefit analysis when you announce your restrictive measures. This, in my view, is a major failing.
When the pandemic first affected this province, one perhaps could find sympathy with the view of move fast, figure out later. But not now. You have had time with your scores of advisors, experts, etc. to take a more thoughtful approach and examine the evidence. Have you, for example, read The Great Barrington Declaration of October 04, 2020? This has been authored, as of this date, by 13,985 medical and and public heath scientists and 42,520 medical practitioners. Three of the founders of this declaration are world renowned professors and researchers at Oxford, Dr. Sunetra Gupta, Stanford, Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Harvard, Dr. Mutha Kulldorff, two Canadians, Dr. Matthew Strauss of Queen’s University and Dr. Annie Janvies, University of Montreal. Have you contacted these Canadians to get an alternative point of view?
Dr Joseph A. Ladapo, Professor of Medicine , UCLA, writing in the Wall Street Journal today, comments in his article entitled ‘An American Epidemic of Covid Mania’ :
‘Covid mania has also wreaked havoc on science and its influence on policy. While scientists’ passion for discovery and improving health has fueled research on the novel coronavirus, Covid mania has interpreted scientific advancements through an increasingly narrow frame. There has only been one question: How can scientific findings be deployed to reduce Covid-19 spread? It hasn’t mattered how impractical these measures may be. Discoveries that might have helped save lives, such as better outpatient therapies, were ignored because they didn’t fit the desired policy outcome.’
As an elected public official, I submit you have not made your case regarding the new restrictions taking into account a cost benefit analysis. At least the public has not seen any such analysis, which I think they deserve.
B. In all the statements that you, your Ministers and officials have made since the beginning, I find a blatant disregard for the provisions in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of our Constitution. One would have thought that you would have shared with the public your appreciation for these provisions and provided what you thought was a reasoned analysis of why you believed your Government’s measures could constitutionally override these Charter provisions. To not have done so is, in my view, a dereliction of your obligation as the First Minister of this Province. Already, various Provincial orders and regulations are being questioned and overridden by the courts.
I must remind you as one who was intricately involved in the Charter that it contains the following:
Fundamental freedoms
2 Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
And
Mobility of citizens
6 (1) Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada
Rights to move and gain livelihood (2) Every citizen of Canada and every person who has the status of a permanent resident of Canada has the right
(a) to move to and take up residence in any province; and
(b) to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province.
And
Life, liberty and security of person
7 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
And
Treatment or punishment
12 Everyone has the right not to be subjected to any cruel and unusual treatment or Provincially [ sic ] punishment.
I submit that you have not made the case for your Government’s orders and regulations in the context of the Charter provisions, and that such a consideration and analysis is necessary and made public, a requirement I would think, before embarking on measures which clearly breech fundamental rights and freedoms in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms which is a part of The Constitution of Canada.
No one doubts the seriousness of the situation, but in a democracy like ours one is not relieved of fundamental responsibilities when the health of all citizens and rights and freedoms of all those citizens are crucially at stake.
Hence, taxpayers and citizens, deserve a full cost benefit analysis of the measures and a full constitutional analysis. Only then can severe restrictions be soberly assessed.
The Pirates of Penzance was the fifth comic opera to come out of the collaboration of librettist Sir W. S. Gilbert and composer Sir Arthur Sullivan. It premiered in New York City – the only one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas to open first in the United States rather than London – on New Year’s Eve in 1879, a year and a half after their fourth work, the H.M.S. Pinafore, had become a huge hit, both in London and internationally.
The hero of The Pirates of Penzance is the character Frederic, a role performed by a tenor. The opera begins with his having completed his twenty-first year – not his twenty-second birthday, for he was born on February 29th, a distinction, or rather, a “paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox”, that becomes essential to the plot in an amusingly absurd way – and the titular pirates throwing him a party. He has, up to this point, served as their apprentice due to a mistake that his nurse, Ruth, made, when he was a boy (she had heard the word “pilot” as “pirate” in his father’s instructions regarding his apprenticeship). The bass-baritone Pirate King (“it is, it is, a glorious thing to be a pirate king”), congratulates him and tells him that he now ranks as a “full blown member of our band”, producing a cheer from the crew, who are then told “My friends, I thank you all from my heart for your kindly wishes. Would that I can repay them as they deserve.” Asked what he means by that, Frederic explains “Today I am out of my indentures, and today I leave you forever.” Astonished, since Frederic is the best man he has, the Pirate King asks for an explanation. Frederic, with Ruth’s help – for she had also joined the pirate crew – explains about the error, and that while as long as the terms of his indentures lasted it was his duty to serve as part of the pirate crew, once they were over “I shall feel myself bound to devote myself heart and soul to your extermination!”
In the course of explaining all of this, Frederic expresses his opinion of his pirate colleagues in these words “Individually, I love you all with affection unspeakable, but, collectively, I look upon you with a disgust that amounts to absolute detestation!”
As tempting as it is to continue this summary until we get to the “doctor of divinity who resides in this vicinity” and Major-General Stanley who, as he likes to introduce himself, is the “very model of a modern Major-General”, I have already arrived at the lines that are the entire point of my having brought all of this up.
I have stated many times in the past that I prefer to call myself a Canadian patriot rather than a Canadian nationalist. There are two ways in which patriotism and nationalism are usually distinguished. The first is a distinction of kind. Patriotism is an affection that people come by naturally as they extend the sentiment that under ordinary circumstances they acquire for the home and neighbourhood they grew up in to include their entire country. Nationalism is an ideology which people obtain through indoctrination. The second is a distinction of object. The object of nationalism is a people, the object of patriotism is a country. I have talked about the first distinction in the past, it is the second which is relevant in this essay. I love my country, the Dominion of Canada, and its history, institutions and traditions. When it comes to my countrymen, however, Canadians, and to be clear, I mean only those who are living at the present moment and not past generations, I often find myself sharing Frederic’s sentiments which were again:
Individually, I love you all with affection unspeakable, but, collectively, I look upon you with a disgust that amounts to absolute detestation!
The more my fellow Canadians show a lack of appreciation for and indifference towards Canada’s traditions and institutions the more inclined I am to think of them, taken collectively, in such uncharitable terms. If opinion polls are any real indication – and to be fair, I do not think that protasis to be certain, far from it – this lack of appreciation and indifference has been very much on the rise among Canadians as of late.
Take personal freedom or liberty, for example. This is a vital Canadian tradition. It goes back, not just the founding of the country in Confederation in 1867, but much further for the Fathers of Confederation, English and French, in adopting the Westminster constitution for our own deliberately chose to retain continuity with a tradition that safeguarded liberty. Sir John A. Macdonald, addressing the legislature of the United Province of Canada in 1865 said:
We will enjoy here that which is the great test of constitutional freedom – we will have the rights of the minority respected. In all countries the rights of the majority take care of themselves, but it is only in countries like England, enjoying constitutional liberty, and safe from the tyranny of a single despot, or of an unbridled democracy, that the rights of minorities are regarded.
Sir Richard Cartwright made similar remarks and said “For myself, sir, I own frankly I prefer British liberty to American equality”. This sentence encapsulated the thinking of the Fathers of Confederation – Canada was to be a British country with British freedom rather than an American country with American equality. In the century and a half (with change) since then, this has been reversed in the thinking of a great many Canadians. In the minds of these Canadians “equality” has become a Canadian value, although not the equality that Sir Richard Cartwright identified with the United States but a much uglier doctrine with the same name, and freedom has become an “American” value. The Liberal Party and their allies in the media and academe are largely if not entirely to blame for this. Indeed, this way of thinking was evident among bureaucrats and other career government officials who tend to be Liberal Party apparatchiks regardless of which party is in government long before it became evident among the general public.
About fourteen years ago, in the Warman v. Lemire case before the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, Dean Steacy, an investigator with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, was asked “What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?” His response was to say “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.” This despite the fact that in the 1982 Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which people like this usually although contrafactually regard as the source of constitutionally protected rights and freedoms in Canada, “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication” is the second of the “fundamental freedoms” enumerated in Section 2. Perhaps Steacy did not think “speech” to be included in “expression”.
When Steacy’s foolish remark was publicized it did not win him much popularity among Canadians. Quite the contrary, it strengthened the grassroots movement that was demanding the repeal of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act, a movement that was ultimately successful during the premiership of Stephen Harper by means of a private member’s bill despite it lacking the support of the Prime Minister and even, as many of us thought at the time, with his tacit disapproval. This demonstrates that as recently as a decade and a half ago, Dean Steacy’s knee-jerk rejection of Canada’s traditional British liberty as “American” did not resonate with Canadians. Can the same be said today?
The last year has provided us with many reasons to doubt this. In March of 2020, after the media irresponsibly induced a panic over the spread of the Wuhan bat flu, most provincial governments, strongly encouraged to do so by the Dominion government, followed the example of governments around the world and imposed an unprecedented universal quarantine, at the time recommended by the World Health Organization, as an experiment in slowing the spread of the virus. This involved a radical and severe curtailing of our basic rights and freedoms. Indeed, the freedoms described as “fundamental” in the second section of the Charter – these include, in addition to the one quoted two paragraphs ago, the freedoms of “conscience and religion”, “peaceful assembly” and “association” – were essentially suspended in their entirety as our governments forbade all in-person social interaction. Initially, as our governments handed over dictatorial powers to the public health officers we were told that this was a short-term measure to “flatten the curve”, to prevent the hospitals from being swamped while we learned more about this new virus and prepared for it. As several of us predicted at the time would happen, “mission creep” quickly set in and the newly empowered health officials became determined to keep these excessive rules and restrictions in place until some increasingly distant goal – the development of a vaccine, the vaccination of the population, the elimination of the virus – was achieved. Apart from a partial relaxation of the rules over the summer months, the lockdown experiment has remained in place to this day, and indeed, when full lockdown measures were re-imposed in the fall, they were even more severe than they had been last March and April. This despite the fact that the evidence is clearly against the lockdown experiment – the virus is less dangerous than was originally thought (and even last March we knew that it posed a serious threat mostly to those who were very old and already had other health complications), its spread rises and falls seasonally similar to the cold and flu, lockdowns and masks have minimal-to-zero effect on this because it has happened more-or-less the same in all jurisdictions regardless of whether they locked down or not or the severity of the lockdown, while lockdowns themselves inflict severe mental, physical, social, cultural and economic damage upon societies.
Polls last year regularly showed a majority – often a large majority – of Canadians in favour of these restrictions and lockdowns, or even wishing for them to be more severe than they actually were. If these polls were at all accurate – again, this is a big if – then this means far fewer Canadians today respect and value their traditional freedoms than has ever been the case in the past, even as recently as a decade ago. It means that far too many Canadians have bought the lie of the public health officers, politicians, and media commentators that valuing freedom is “selfish”, when, in reality, supporting restrictions, masks, and lockdowns means preferring that the government take away the rights and freedoms of all your neighbours over you taking responsibility for your own safety and those of your loved ones and exercising reasonable precautions. It means that far too many Canadians now value “safety” – which from the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution to this day has ever been the excuse totalitarians of every stripe, Communist, woke, whatever, have used to tyrannize people and take away their freedoms – over freedom.
Over the past week or so, the mainstream media have been reporting opinion poll results that seem to indicate that a similar lack of appreciation for an essential Canadian institution is growing. According to the media the poll shows that support for replacing our hereditary royal monarch with an elected head of state is higher than it has ever been before, although it is not near as high as the lockdown support discussed above and is still below having majority support. There is good reason to doubt the accuracy of such poll results in that they indicate growing support for a change the media itself seems to be trying to promote given the way it has used the scandal surrounding the recent vice-regal resignation to attack the office of the Queen’s representative, the Governor General, when the problem is obviously with the person who filled the office, and the way in which she was chosen, i.e., hand-picked by Captain Airhead in total disregard of the qualities the office calls for, selection procedures that worked well in the past such as with Payette’s immediate predecessor, or even the most basic vetting. There is also, of course, a question over whether these poll results indicate an actual growth in small-r republican preferences or merely disapproval of the next in line of succession, His Royal Highness Prince Charles.
To the extent that this poll is accurate, however, it indicates that many Canadians have traded the Canadian way of thinking for the American way of thinking. Americans think of the Westminster system as being inferior to their own republican constitution because they consider it to be less than democratic with a hereditary monarch as the head of state. The historic and traditional Canadian perspective is that the Westminster system is superior to a republican constitution because it is more than democratic, incorporating the monarchical principle along with the democratic. To trade the Canadian for the American perspective on this is to impoverish our thinking. That a constitution is better for including more than just democracy is a viewpoint with an ancient pedigree that can be traced back to ancient Greece. That democracy is the highest principle of government and that a constitution is therefore weaker for having a non-elected head of state is an entirely Modern perspective. It cannot even be traced back to ancient Rome, for while the Roman republic was like the American republic in being kingless, it was unlike the American republic in that it was openly and unabashedly aristocratic and made not the slightest pretense of being democratic. Some might consider an entirely Modern perspective to be superior to one with an ancient pedigree, but such are ludicrously wrong. Novelty is not a quality of truth – the truer an idea is, the more like it is that you will be able to find it throughout history, stretching back to the most ancient times, rather than merely in the present day.
Indeed, to think that an elected head of state is preferable to a hereditary monarch at this point in time, that is to say after the clownish mayhem of the fiascos that were the last two American presidential elections, is to embrace the Modern perspective at the worst possible moment, the moment in which it has been utterly discredited. It is bad enough that Canadians have lately allowed the American presidential election style to influence the way we regard our parliamentary elections so as to make the question of which personality cult leader we want as Prime Minister into the primary or even sole factor to be considered in voting for whom we want for our local constituency representative. We do not need to Americanize the office of head of state as well.
We are better off for having a hereditary royal monarch as our head of state and a constitution that is therefore more than, not less than, democratic. Historically and traditionally, the institution of the monarchy has been the symbol and safeguard of our traditional rights and freedoms. I have long said that in Canada the monarchy and freedom stand and fall together. Therefore, if the polls are correct about waning Canadian support for both, this speaks very poorly about the present generation of Canadians. Which is why if these trends continue, Canadians who still love their country with its traditional monarchy and freedoms will be increasingly tempted to individually love their countrymen with affection unspeakable, but collectively look upon them with a disgust that amounts to absolute detestation.
Preston Manning: Lockdown rules are violating our rights. I’m calling on the justice minister to intervene
Author of the article:Preston Manning, Special to National PostPublishing date:Jan 26, 2021 • 20 hours ago • 7 minute read
The following is an edited excerpt from a letter sent by Preston Manning, former leader of the Reform party and former leader of the official Opposition in Parliament, to Justice Minister and Attorney General David Lametti.
The primary purpose of this letter is to request action on the part of yourself and the House of Commons’ standing committee on justice and human rights to achieve a better and more equitable balance between: the protection of the health of Canadians through government measures adopted in response to the COVID-19 crisis and the protection of the rights and freedoms of Canadians as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
One of the unfortunate and presumably unintended consequences of the health protection measures has been the widespread and prolonged infringement of “fundamental rights” that are guaranteed by the charter:
Regrettably, it must also be emphasized that these violations have been occurring for more than 10 months and in large and ever-increasing numbers throughout the country. Moreover, in addition to these violations of “fundamental freedoms,” other important rights and freedoms guaranteed by the charter are also being infringed, including widespread violations of democratic rights, mobility rights, legal rights, equality rights and the right of every citizen and permanent resident to “pursue the gaining of a livelihood.”
The denial of the right to pursue the gaining of a livelihood, which includes the right to work and operate a business, is particularly devastating, as it affects the social, economic and financial well-being of millions of Canadians.
While health under our Constitution is primarily a provincial responsibility, given the federal role in responding to COVID-19 and in bringing the charter into being, surely it is the federal government that ought to take the lead in balancing our COVID response with the rights and freedoms that are enumerated in the charter.
I acknowledge that Section 1 of the charter does permit governments to impose limits on the rights and freedoms of Canadians, so long as those limits can be “demonstrably justified” as “reasonable” in a free and democratic society. But in order for these measures to be seen as legitimate, the government has an obligation to provide Parliament, and the public, with evidence that it has done its due diligence and taken into account all the scientific evidence, including the views of those who disagree with the government’s assumptions.
For example, if the governmental response includes continued lockdowns, a demonstrable and reasonable justification would require the government to present a clearly written plan. Such a plan should:
show exactly why such extraordinary measures are required;
identify the nature and magnitude of the anticipated impacts of such measures;
propose concrete measures for mitigating the known collateral damage that such lockdowns produce; and
specify when these supposedly “temporary” measures will end, and on what basis (to say that lockdown measures will be lifted when the number of “cases” is “low enough” is not a satisfactory criterion and only generates massive uncertainty among workers, employers and investors).
The charter provides for the protection of the rights and freedoms of Canadians by declaring that: “Anyone whose rights or freedoms, as guaranteed by this charter, have been infringed or denied may apply to a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances.” The Constitution also empowers courts to declare that “any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution is to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force or effect.”
However, I would suggest that these provisions are insufficient under the circumstances, given that the process of applying to the courts for relief is unfamiliar to, and beyond the means of, most Canadians. Since not all Canadians have the resources or the expertise to avail themselves of this right of appeal to the courts, inequality of access becomes a further limitation on the ability of Canadians to exercise this right.
Furthermore, if all the Canadians whose rights have been infringed over the last year were to apply to the courts for redress, it would overwhelm the court system. Even in the event of such a flood of applications, the courts are likely to view the health protection issue, particularly in an emergency, to be a policy matter to be dealt with by Parliament, not the judiciary.
As a lifelong democrat and a former parliamentarian, I completely agree that the balancing of conflicting rights is first and foremost the responsibility of the duly elected Parliament, with appeals to the courts being a measure of last resort. After all, Canada’s current Constitution was drafted and made law by elected representatives of the people, not appointed judges, so it is elected officials and those reporting to them (civil servants) who have the primary responsibility for protecting the rights and freedoms it guarantees and balancing that protection with other demands.
This leads me to a third request, namely that you and your parliamentary colleagues implement other measures that could be undertaken by Parliament, cabinet and the civil service to correct the current imbalance between the necessary protection of the health of Canadians and the equally necessary protection of their constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms.
These additional measures are required because what might have been confined to a health crisis has unfortunately been turned into a social crisis, an economic crisis, a pending financial crisis and a crisis for children, university and college students, and high-performance athletes — three cohorts of Canadians who are least vulnerable to the coronavirus and who ought to have been the least affected by efforts to limit its spread.
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Allow me to suggest five such measures:
Public recognition by the prime minister and the government that the COVID-19 crisis has become a multi-dimensional public emergency that requires the government to broaden its management beyond the health department and the advice of the medical community to include a broader range of scientific expertise and the meaningful involvement of other federal agencies with experience and expertise in managing public emergencies.
The convening of special sessions of Parliament, until the COVID crisis has passed, in which each member will be given an opportunity to give a short report on the health situation in his or her constituency, the positive and negative impacts of the health-protection measures adopted and suggestions for securing a more balanced and effective response.
Ordering the Department of Justice to conduct comprehensive assessments of the impacts of health-protection measures on the rights and freedoms of Canadians; to openly and transparently present the results of such assessments to Parliament; to put forward proposals for balancing health protections with the protection of rights and freedoms; and to adopt and implement those balancing measures that receive majority support in Parliament.
Action by the ministers of finance, economic development and natural resources to introduce legislation requiring economic impact assessments to be performed on every major health and environmental protection measure proposed or adopted by the federal government.
The employment of due diligence in the development and implementation of these and whatever further measures are required to effectively balance the protection of the health of Canadians with the protection of their rights and freedoms.
Let me make crystal clear that I fully recognize that the coronavirus is a serious threat to the health and well-being of Canadians that requires substantive governmental action. I myself, due to age and a family predisposition to lung-related illnesses, am personally in a very vulnerable group.
But in the interests of all Canadians, I respectfully ask for your active support in achieving an equitable balance between the protection of the health of Canadians and the protection of their fundamental rights and freedoms under the Constitution, and an equitable balance between the physical well-being of Canadians and their social, economic and financial well-being.
As I have said many times in the past, I am not an admirer of the
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This is not because I disagree with
the “fundamental freedoms” listed in Section 2 or the basic legal and
civil rights listed in Sections 7 to 13. All of these rights and
freedoms, which are by far the most important rights and freedoms in the
entire document, Canadians already possessed as subjects of Her Majesty
under Common Law before 1982. The reason I dislike the Charter is
because the Charter, rather than making these rights and freedoms more
secure, as the Liberals who drafted it want you to believe, made them
less secure. It includes two extremely broad loopholes.
The clause “subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as
can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society” found in
Section 1 is the first of these. Who says what limits are “reasonable”
and who decides whether they are “demonstrably justified in a free and
democratic society?” The government that seeks to place limits on
these rights and freedoms cannot be trusted to make this decision
itself.
The second loophole is Section 33, the Exception Section with its
notorious “notwithstanding clause”. This section allows the Dominion
and provincial governments to pass Acts which will operate
“notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15
of this Charter”, i.e., the sections about our fundamental freedoms and
basic legal rights. Although such Acts are required to sunset in five
years (subsection 3) they can be renewed (subsection 4). This second
loophole is the reason former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said, and he
was right to say it, that the “Charter is not worth the paper it’s
written on.”
This is not the only problem with the Charter.
Section 7 reads “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of
the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in
accordance with the principles of fundamental justice”, substituting
“security of the person” for “property” which is the third of the basic
rights under Common Law, in which the security of person and property is
the concise way of stating all three basic rights. Property is
nowhere mentioned in the Charter. This has long been criticized as one
of the chief failings of this document and has been thought to reflect
the Marxist inclinations of those who have led the Liberal Party,
arguably since Lester Pearson became leader in 1958, but especially
since Pierre Trudeau took over in 1968.
Subsection 2 of Section 4 allows a Dominion or provincial government
with a large enough backing in the House of Commons or the provincial
legislature – a supermajority of two-thirds – to suspend elections
indefinitely in a time of “real or apprehended, war, invasion or
insurrection.” Note the words “or apprehended.” The threat of war,
invasion or insurrection does not have to be real. Pray that neither
the Liberals nor any other party, ever obtain enough seats in Parliament
to put this subsection into effect.
Subsection 2 of Section 15 nullifies what subsection 1 says about how
every individual is “equal before and under the law and has the right to
the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without
discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race,
national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or
physical disability.”
I am not particularly keen on the wording of subsection 1 either.
Saying that everyone has a right to “equal protection and equal benefit
of the law without discrimination” can be interpreted in two ways. It
can be interpreted as binding the State, preventing it from practicing
said discrimination in its administration of the law and justice. I
would not have a problem with that interpretation. It can also be
interpreted as empowering the State to interfere in our everyday
interactions to make sure we aren’t discriminating against each other.
I have a huge problem with that – it is a form of totalitarian thought
control.
Consider the Canadian Human Rights Act which was passed five years prior
to the Charter. Although the expression “human rights” is thought by
most people to mean rights which all human beings possess by virtue of
their humanity and which only bad governments violate, and the phrase
“human rights violation” is ordinarily understood to refer to
governments incarcerating people for indefinite periods without a trial,
torturing them, murdering them, and the like, this Act places limits on
individuals not the State, which it empowers to police the thoughts and
motivations of Canadians in their private interactions with each other.
The second subsection of Section 15 states that the first subsection
“does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object
the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups
including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or
ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical
disability.” In other words, the State is allowed to practice
discrimination on the basis of race, rational or ethnic origin, colour,
religion, etc., if that discrimination is the type sometimes called
reverse discrimination, that is to say, discrimination against white
people, especially those of British and French stock, Christians, males,
etc.
Section 15 as a whole, then, appears to authorize the State to interfere
in our private affairs to prevent us from discriminating against each
other, while allowing the State to practice a form of discrimination
itself.
Other flaws in the Charter itself could be pointed out but those that I
have mentioned here are by far the worst. Worse, in my view, than any
actual flaw in the Charter, however, is the attitude towards the Charter
and the set of false notions about it that the Liberal Party has
encouraged us to hold ever since 1982. There are many, for example,
who refer to the Charter as if it were our constitution and claim that
Pierre Trudeau gave us our constitution. This is not a claim the
Charter makes for itself and it is no such thing. The Charter has been
a part of our constitution since 1982, but it is not the
constitution itself. Indeed, even the British North America Act of
1867, which was renamed the Constitution Act, 1867 during the
repatriation process which gave us the Charter but remains in effect, is
not the whole of our constitution. Most of our constitution is in
fact, unwritten, or, to put it another way, written in prescription and
tradition rather than paper and ink. As our greatest constitution
expert, the late Eugene Forsey used to say to those who made the absurd
claim that Pierre Trudeau had given us our constitution, we still have
the constitution we had in 1867, albeit with a new name, and bells and
whistles added.
Even more common is the strange notion that the Charter itself gave us
our rights and freedoms. Admirers of the Charter tend to view it this
way. Some critics, such as William Gairdner (The Trouble With Canada, 1990) and Kenneth McDonald (The Monstrous Trick, 1998, Alexis in Charterland,
2004) have argued that the Charter is an example of continental-style
charter law, like the Napoleonic Code, intended to replace our Common
Law system of rights and freedoms. The reality is more nuanced than
that. Before explaining the nuance and what really happened, we need
to understand the difference between the two systems and why this would
indeed be a “monstrous trick” if it were in fact true.
Under continental-style charter law, everything is imposed from the top
down, from the law itself, to the rights and freedoms that exist under
it. Therefore, under this kind of law, you only have the specific
rights and freedoms that are spelled out on paper in black and white.
The question, under this system of law, is whether or not I have
permission to do something.
Under Common Law, the law is not imposed from the top down, except in
the sense of the underlying natural law being laid down by God, and even
then this raises the much-debated theological question of whether God’s
law and justice are expressions of His character or of His will.
Don’t worry. I will not attempt to answer that question here as it is
quite extraneous to this discussion. The Common Law is not imposed by
the State. Although the Sovereign authority, the Queen-in-Parliament,
has the power to add to, subtract from, and otherwise alter the Law, the
Law is not the creation of the Sovereign authority. The law arises
out of natural law and justice, through a process of discovery in the
courts, where disputes are brought to be arbitrated on the basis of
fairly hearing all the evidence on both sides. Rights and freedoms,
under Common Law, are not limited to those that are spelled out in black
and white. The question, under this system of law, is whether or not I
am prohibited to do something. If not, I am free to do it.
The Charter of Freedoms does not actually replace Common Law with
continental-style charter law. It merely creates the impression of
having done so. The Charter does not identify itself as the source of
our rights and freedoms, nor does it say that we have only those rights
and freedoms it spells out. Indeed, it states the very opposite of
this. Remember that the addition of the Charter was part of a
constitutional repatriation process that required adopting an amendment
formula and which required the participation of the provincial
governments. Nine out of ten of the provinces are fully Common Law,
and it is the exception, which under the provisions of the Quebec Act of
1774 has a hybrid of Common Law criminal law and French civil law,
which dissented from the final product. The Liberals would never have
been able to get away with substituting continental law for Common Law
in this context in 1982. They, quite in keeping with their modus
operandi of never telling the truth when a lie will suffice, settled for
creating the impression that they had done so. Their totalitarian ends
would be met, as long as Canadians started to think in terms of “am I
permitted” rather than “is it prohibited.”
This is why the most important section in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms is Section 26. Here it is in full:
The guarantee in this Charter of certain rights and freedoms shall
not be construed as denying the existence of any other rights or
freedoms that exist in Canada.
This is the Charter’s acknowledgement, tucked away in the miscellaneous
category towards the end rather than being placed in the very first
section as it ought to have been, that the Charter did not take us out
from under Common Law and cause all of our Common Law rights and
freedoms to disappear.
To illustrate what this means in application to a current hot topic, the
Supreme Court of Canada was entirely in the wrong when it said as part
of its ruling in R v Hasselwander
in 1993, that Canadians have no constitutional right to own guns. The
passing of the Charter, by its own admission in Section 26, did not
cancel our right, as subjects of Her Majesty, to have arms for our
defence, such as are allowed by law. This is a Common Law right, the
fifth right that Sir William Blackstone in the first volume of his Commentary on the Laws of England
(1765) identified as a necessary auxiliary to the basic and absolute
rights of life, liberty, and property, and which had been put into
statute in the Bill of Rights of 1689. This does not mean that
the Supreme Court of Canada was necessarily wrong in its ruling on this
case which involved the confiscation of a Mini-Uzi sub-machine gun. It
does mean, however, that it erred in saying that Canadians had no
constitutional gun rights. This was in response to the defence’s own
mistake of trying to argue based upon American law, but what they should
have said was that Canadians’ Common Law right to own guns is not
absolute, but is subject to the qualification “as are allowed by law.”
The Disgraceful Payoff to Killer Khadr & Trudeau Invokes the Phoney Charter
Oh please Mr Trudeau, just do it, don’t insult us with your rationalizations about how the Charter protects us all “EVEN WHEN IT’S UNCOMFORTABLE”. That wonderful charter you speak about didn’t protect Ernst Zundel back in the days when a powerful lobby (more powerful than our charter) wanted his head or Brad Love jailed on many occasions for writing letters to our privileged politicians or James Sears who puts out a satirical newspaper, loved by many but hated by the powerful few who can lobby the Government to have his postal rights taken away. The charter didn’t work for them, nor has it helped the many many, many more Canadians who who have lost jobs and been pauperized for simply disagreeing with the party line. Your smiley face may impress many but hypocrisy is an ugly thing. — Lynda Mortl
On Khadr, Trudeau says Charter protects all Canadians ‘even when it is uncomfortable’
Former Guantanamo Bay detainee received $10.5M this week, sources tell CBC News
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects all Canadians “even when it is uncomfortable,” responding to a question about his government’s apology and controversial payout to former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr.
“The Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects all Canadians, every one of us, even when it is uncomfortable. This is not about the details or merits of the Khadr case. When the government violates any Canadian’s Charter rights we all end up paying for it,” he told reporters in Hamburg, where he’s wrapping up the G20 summit.
Khadr — who has been branded a terrorist by some and a child soldier subjected to torture by others — received a $10.5-million cheque Wednesday, sources told CBC News
Trudeau has been travelling all week with stops in Ireland and Scotland, before flying to Germany for the global leaders’ summit. Meanwhile, the Khadr payout has dominated headlines back home.
Former Guantanamo Bay prisoner Omar Khadr, 30, is seen in Mississauga, Ont., on Thursday, July 6, 2017. The federal government has paid Khadr $10.5 million and apologized to him for violating his rights during his long ordeal after capture by American forces in Afghanistan in July 2002. (Colin Perkel/Canadian Press)
News of the settlement first leaked late Monday night, but it took until Friday for the government to officially confirm that a settlement had been reached — and Ottawa refused to disclose the amount.
“It is not about previous behaviour on the battlefield in Afghanistan; it is about the acts and other decisions the Canadian government took against Mr. Khadr after he was captured and detained,” Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Friday. “Those facts are not in dispute and there is no doubt about how the Supreme Court views them. The government of Canada offended the most basic standards.”
Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer said it was “disgusting” for the government to concoct a “secret deal” and hand over millions to a convicted terrorist.
“This payout is a slap in the face to men and women in uniform who face incredible danger every day to keep us safe,” he said Friday.
Scheer said he believes the Harper government’s decision to repatriate Khadr in 2012 was a sufficient response to the Supreme Court’s ruling that Khadr’s rights were violated.
‘Restores a little bit my reputation’
In an interview with CBC News’ Rosemary Barton, the Canadian-born Khadr, 30, said he hopes the settlement will help restore his reputation.
“I think it restores a little bit my reputation here in Canada, and I think that’s the biggest thing for me,” he said.
Khadr was 15 when he was captured by U.S. troops following the confrontation at a suspected al-Qaeda compound in Afghanistan in 2002.
Suspected of throwing the grenade that killed U.S. Sgt. Christopher Speer, he was taken to Guantanamo and ultimately charged with war crimes by a military commission.
In 2010, he pleaded guilty to charges that included murder and was sentenced to eight years plus the time he had already spent in custody. He returned to Canada two years later to serve the remainder of his sentence and was released in May 2015 pending an appeal of his guilty plea, which he said was made under duress.
Terry Tremaine Exposes Junk Science and Lysenkoism
VANCOUVER. September 5, 2013. Former political prisoner Terry Tremaine offered an enthusiastic audience a glimpse of his work as a mathematician and scientist. Before he was victimized by Richard Warman for his political views, Mr. Tremaine was a well-respected university lecturer in Saskatoon. His talk was part of a four city Western Canadian speaking tour which takes him to Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton and Calgary,
Mr. Tremaine exposed the trend of Lysenkoism or ideology-motivated junk science. “Lysenkoism is masking ideology as science,” he explained, Trofim Lysenko was a fanatic pseudo-scientist in charge of Stalin’s agricultural programmes. He was a radical proponent of nurture or environment, as opposed to nature or genetics, in raising crops and animals. His lunacy led to repeated famines and shortages.Under the Czar, with little mechanization, Russia fed itself and had considerable excess for export. Under communism, the Soviet Union never once fed itself. “Lysenkoism as a failed ideology of agricultural science was not abandoned by the Soviets until the 1960s after repeated wheat crop failures,” Mr. Tremaine said.
Trofim Lysenko
In more recent times, he explained we’ve had the hysteria over “global warming.|” Contrary to what the global warming advocates insist, “the science is NOT settled,” We know the earth’s climate has been changing for a million years, getting warmer and then colder. The assertion that the current slight increase in temperatures is due to carbons emitted by automobiles and the oil industry is laughable, he said. The largest source of carbon dioxide emissions is the sea. There were period of rising temperatures in the early Middle Ages when carbon emissions caused by humans were negligible. Another likely cause of slight temperature changes is change in the heat of the sun.
The major impetus for the global warming campaign is economic and political, not scientific. Al Gore and his associates, for instance, imagined a market of arbitrary “carbon credits”. They hoped to run an exchange for such credits and pocket huge commissions. Low energy using Third World countries would be given carbon credits. High energy using Western nations like Canada would have to buy the “credits” as punishment for producing carbon emissions. The regime to combat the non-problem of global warming would also fulfill the leftist goal of a massive wealth transfer from the Developed World to the Third World, he explained.
“Human inequality is the subject of my talk along with the intrusion of political correctness into science,” he said. “Political correctness is simply another word for Marxism. When you strip away the mumbo jumbo of ‘dialectical materialism,’ it’s all about radical equality.”
Terry Tremaine
Unlike pure ideology, “science is about formulating testable hypotheses,” Mr. Tremaine explained. “The way good science works is to try to offer methods to show its hypothesis is wrong, while bad science tries to insulate itself from refutation.”
“Charles Darwin,” he pointed out, “did not set out to develop the Theory of Evolution. Man has always sought to know his place in the universe and every culture has a creation myth.”
The Industrial Revolution caused considerable cutting into rock to build railways and canals and to dig mines. “This work revealed stratified rock levels which showed different fossil creatures tied to different historical ages.”
Darwin was trained in Divinity. “However, like many rural vicars, he loved to collect bugs and butterflies and birds nests. These amateur scientists use their findings to remind their congregations of the glory of God’s creation.”
When Darwin got he chance to accompany the Captain of the Beagle as his travelling companion on a five-year voyage around the world, he jumped at the opportunity. He brought back samples from his explorations. For instance, he found the Galapagos Islands a living laboratory and he could trace the differentiation of finches from one island to another, as they adapted to radically different environments.
He concluded that there had been modification by natural selection. “However, he was reluctant to publish his findings for 20 years. What do you do when you fear your conclusions may lead to social disruption and the possible breakdown of society? His wife was a dedicated Christian. Darwin identified with the rural aristocracy and feared his findings might lead to the sort of anarchy of the French Revolution.”
In Darwin’s time, “the problem was the evolution of man. People could accept animal evolution, but many had trouble accepting that man is part of the animal kingdom lions or eagles..”
Mr. Tremaine recalled the “member” or judge at the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling on the Richard Warman complaint about his Internet postings in 2007: “He said, in his decision, ‘Mr. Tremaine’s writings are not legitimate political discourse because they do not promote equality.’ It makes no sense that just because the government wants to promote equality that I must too. What does equality even mean? We are genetically different and look different. Some are stronger, faster, smarter.
“Now,” he continued, “some will respond that in the eyes of God we are all equal. But that is not a scientific comment; it is an article of faith,”
“So, is equality a false concept?’ he asked. “Scientific claims must be testable. The Human Genome Project seeks to map out all human variations. It has been determined that variations among all human populations constitute just one and a half per cent of all DNA. So, the ideologues will argue, we are all essentially the same or equal. However, the seemingly small differences are huge. We differ from chimpanzees by only one and a half per cent of our DNA. Thus, any human being could be genetically one third of the way toward being a chimp!”
“Genetically,” he added, “we share 50 per cent of the DNA of a banana. “
“We’re being sold a false bill of goods about human equality. If we really are all equal, why are there campaign throughout the West to level things. Ultimately, the attempts to impose equality will discourager excellence,” he warned, “with dangerous results for our civilization. You can ignore the facts, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring the fact.”
“Most people have forgotten that the subtitle of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species was The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The world is a constant struggle among the races,” he added.
According to Canada’s weird Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which he called “a muddle of stupidity, we have equality of rights before the law under Sec. 15.1 but, then, under Sec. 15.2, there are special rights for special minorities.”
Tom Paine, Mr. Tremaine pointed out, warned not to trust charters of so-called rights, as they take real rights away. “We have rights by our very nature as humans. These are unalienable rights,” he added. and concluded by reminding of a warning by the late Doug Christie; “Once the State can define your rights, it can also take them away.” This has happened in spades in Canada under the deceptive Charter.
