Madam Speaker, the member has raised a number of important issues.
I will respond to his last comment first. If the notwithstanding clause was meaningless, never meant to be used, then why was it put in? Surely we owe the people of Canada better than to toss in empty words and meaningless phrases.
I would argue that it is there for a reason. It is there because wise people recognized that there may be unintended consequences to the introduction of the charter, and that those consequences needed to be dealt with and that there had to be a mechanism allowing those unintended consequences to be dealt with in order to preserve the rule of the people in this country.
With respect to the list, it is my belief that democracy has as one of its tenets, the equality of all people before the law. It is not the equality of people before the law, including a whole bunch of things. As soon as we mention a, b and c, then people say what about d, e and f.
By including some people or some cases specifically, we are, whether intentionally or not, giving special recognition to those categories, those lists. That is wrong because it detracts from the clear principle that Canadians are equal before and under the law, and have certain rights as set out in the charter.
More than that, the charter has been used as a reason not to bring in effective legislation. One case in point is the desire to attack organized crime. We know from the shootings in Quebec, the problems in human smuggling, and other situations that are laid at the doorstep of organized crime that we must take steps to outlaw criminal organizations and participation in those organizations.
What happened? There is always a fear that the charter would overrule that law because it would take away from people's right to association. Parliament should say that notwithstanding the charter right to association it believes that criminal organizations must be outlawed and that no one should be permitted to participate in them. However it cannot say that. We have this cumbersome set of rules that is trying to get at these organizations and is not doing so directly.
Is the member asking, are there unintended consequences of the charter? That is a good example of where a clear evil in society, a clear problem in society, or a clear unsafe situation in society needs to be firmly and fairly dealt with, but because the charter and the interpretations of the charter are allowed to interfere with that the will of the people is thwarted.
This is definitely a situation where the notwithstanding clause should be put into place and state that, notwithstanding, we do not allow criminal organizations to operate with impunity in our society.