There's the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was passed in 1982. Then you have the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights. A charter is a vehicle with four wheels and an engine. It's up to legislators to put gas in the tank and drive it.
For example, the people who felt their rights weren't being acknowledged went to court, and the court made decisions based on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Jordan decision, which limits trial delays so they're fair and equitable, is based on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Canadian Victims Bill of Rights, or CVBR, was passed in 2015. The Liberal government, which came to power in 2015, was responsible for developing the CVBR based on complaints that victims had filed with the ombud, for example, that they had not been informed, had not participated in review board hearings or had not been protected. However, no one in the government, including the Minister of Justice, who was nevertheless responsible for shaping the CVBR, made any effort to improve it. I've had to introduce bills in the Senate in order to lend substance to the CVBR.
Consider this example. The parents of a girl who had been murdered contacted me at one point because they had just learned that, although their daughter's murderer was in prison, he had access to Facebook and was posting pictures of their daughter. The family contacted Facebook, and it took six months, an article in the newspapers and action from my office for Facebook to shut down that criminal's page. I therefore tabled a bill to define the word “protection” in the CVBR. It doesn't just mean protecting life. It also means protecting the victim's identity and private life.
The CVBR definitions should have been improved since 2015. One way to improve the CVBR would be for it to provide for a complete review process. No provision is made in the Canadian Victims Bill of Rights for a complaint review process, whereas there is in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.