[OneHope]

I have two questions concerning the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

1. Before the Charter was drafted, what document protected the rights of Canadians? Did the drafting of the Charter significantly affect anyone's lives or make anyone more free?

2. At the leaders debate, Paul Martin proposed taking out the Notwithstanding Clause from the Charter. Harper responded by saying that this act will give extreme power to the courts. Is taking out this clause a bad idea?

[Grasshopper359]

Prior to the Charter, it was 1960s Bill of Rights.

The "Notwithstanding Clause" is frequently misused, but I think it should stay. They're both right, and they're both wrong, I think.

Our system has to keep a fine balance between the government, which passes laws, and the courts, whose job it is to interpret them. Haprer and Martin have different views on where this line should be drawn. Harper doesn't think that the courts should have any place to "meddle" with laws that the House passes, that they should all taken at face value. He takes this position I think because he knows that the courts would strike down most of his ideas - the Supreme Court judges arean't easily swayed by public opinion and political manipulation tactics. Martin, on the other hand, wants to keep Parliament out of the picture as much as possible, because he's on shaky political ground, and having Section 33 makes his legislation vulnerable to post-passage destruction by an alliance of opposition parties.

That's where they're both wrong. Now for their being right. Harper says that removing Section 33 will give the courts power over the elected government, which is true. When the Charter was drafted, the Supreme Court because the final authority on what was lawful in government, instead of the House of Commons. However, Section 33 was added to give Parliament the right to override certain portions of the Charter, and even then, only for five years, unless renewed, in an attempt to strike a balance between the two branches. So Harper has a point here - removing it would make give the courts more power (but hardly the slippery slope he claims it to be). Martin argues that the Clause is so often misused that its harm outweighs its good, and in that, he's right. When Alberta tried to use it to define "marriage" as only opposite sex, that was a blatent misuse of the Section. And such uses are common. The PQ used it on almost every single one of their laws when it was first introduced.

I think we should keep it, but there need to be limits to its use. It's not supposed to be used just because the government or opposition doesn't like the fact that a certain law was passed or not passed.