I hear support for that from the Conservative side, which does not surprise me because it probably would have done the same thing. A least the current government probably would have done the same thing.
However, any analysis of the invocation of the War Measures Act says that it was wrong and unnecessary, which is quite clear, but that it targeted specific communities, whether it was the sovereigntists in Quebec, a number of the labour movements or other political activists on the left in Quebec, with absolutely no basis for them to be attacked by their government.
The charter says that we do not accept that and that we will put in place both the rules and the ability to enforce those rules.
If we were to go back and study the debate that went on for at least 10 years up to 1982 when we finally repatriated the Constitution and brought the charter into effect, the debate was between the supremacy of Parliament and the right of individuals within society to be protected from their government at times when they were being discriminated against. The War Measures Act is a good example, but there are any number of other ones, such as the treatment of the Japanese Canadians during the Second World War and the Manitoba school question in the early 1900s in terms of linguistic rights. We can look at what was going on in the fifties in Quebec with Premier Duplessis attacking the Jehovah's Witnesses simply because they wanted to practise their faith.
We can go through any number of examples where provincial and federal governments in Canada, prior to the charter governments, breached fundamental rights, fundamental civil liberties. That has not happened much since the charter came into effect but there have been attempts.
The other thing the charter has done is it has made it possible that individuals or groups who are being discriminated against or being abused by their government, whether at the provincial or federal level, have some place they can turn to for relief. It is the essence of democracy. I do not think anyone disagrees that the right of the majority rules as long as it respects the rights of the minority. We cannot have a democracy unless we have both those elements.
However, we also cannot have a democracy if people who are in the minority and who believe they are being discriminated against do not have some place to turn, a shield to protect them and a process to utilize that shield. The charter gave us that . We can go back to the bill of rights that Prime Minister Diefenbaker brought in. It was a simple bill of this House. It was not a fundamental law and it was not part of the Constitution. A couple of times in my practice I attempted to use it and, as always, there were very few exceptions, I always remember the Drybones case because it was one of the few exceptions where the court applied the principles in Mr. Diefenbaker's bill of rights and gave the first nations person some relief from what was clearly an abusive policy under the Criminal Code at the time.
I think that was the only case that occurred under the bill of rights where some relief was granted. Any other time it was invoked or an attempt was made to use it, which I think came into effect in 1962 or 1963, the answer was always no, that was a bill and that this law, which is using the minority, supercedes it. That was the situation we were faced with until 1982 and then in 1985 when the balance of the charter came into effect.
Since that time, if individuals believe they are being abused by either the provincial or federal government and they have convinced the court, whether it is under section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of the charter, they receive a fair hearing in the vast majority of cases and, if they are able to forcefully put forth the facts, they are granted relief in the vast majority of cases. As charter decisions evolved, the type of relief received also evolved.
It is a meaningful, useful document. It is that shield which, in the vast majority of cases now, protects minority groups in this country. Women's groups have used it extensively to establish their rights. We argue that men and women are equal in this country but the reality is that it has taken a good number of cases, several of them all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, to enforce those rights. The gay, lesbian, transgender community has used it.
In the case of same sex marriages, couples had to take their case to the Supreme Court because the Liberal government of the day tried to hide behind the charter by sending it off to the Supreme Court, even though clear messages had been sent by a number of courts at that time. To its credit, the Supreme Court ruled in some respect favourably but also sent it back here.
Unfortunately, and I hear it from the Conservatives but it was true with the Liberals, the charter does not only empower the courts, it also imposes a responsibility on this legislature. We, as legislators, have a responsibility under the charter to ensure, as we are drafting laws at this level of government, as do provincial governments, that the bills we pass are charter-proof.
The attorney general has a responsibility under the present system to ensure that every bill that goes through this House is analyzed from the perspective of the charter. We need to be more transparent and more accountable in that regard. We get opinions on any number of bills from the justice department that are questionable and that we do not assume our full responsibility as legislators that has been imposed on us by the terms of the charter.
Where are we at this point? There is overwhelming support in the country for this. It has worked extremely well. Members from the Commonwealth who use the Westminster system of Parliament, the concept of the supremacy of Parliament, and other countries that have similar bills of rights or charters of rights, tell us that they have looked much more to Canada as a model, not just in the drafting of their documents but, more important, because it is an ongoing process, they have looked to Canada and our courts for interpretation of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as we did when we helped draft the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that are true for the whole world.
No matter what kind of political background or economic system a country has, those fundamental rights should apply to everyone: the right to practice one's faith, the right to freedom of speech, et cetera. We can go down the list but we know what they are.
The rest of the world, at least within the Commonwealth, in particular those who work under the Westminster system, look to Canada and our courts for the interpretation. I have been critical at times but our courts have taken a middle road. They have not been overly activist by any stretch of the imagination but, at the same time, they have consistently upheld the charter and those fundamental rights for all Canadians.
I will use an example of where I have been critical of the courts. Under the right of association, I believe that interpretation should be extended to the right for people to strike, to withdraw their labour. It seems to me that flows logically from that right of association. If people have the right of association, then they also have the right to not associate, especially with regard to labour. Courts have not been willing to accept that in this country.
I could point to other things the courts have done that I would be critical of. For example, some of the rights that have been extended to corporations that give them similar rights to individuals has maybe gone too far. It has certainly gone way too far in the United States. Hopefully, we will not follow that model.
I raised my concerns and objections that I have to some of the interpretations. A fundamental mistake that the Conservatives and right wing ideologists make is that they say that this is a really bad decision and that the charter has fundamental flaws in it. Those two things are not logically sequential. People can say that they disagree with a decision, as the about to be member from Vaughan did when he said that the Hells Angels had benefited from the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I think that is factually wrong but, more important, it is wrong because what he was really saying was that he did not like the courts' interpretation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He was not attacking the charter, if he had thought about it, but I think he sometimes had a problem doing that in terms of understanding what he was really saying. What he was really saying was that he did not like that interpretation of the charter mostly around due process in the case of the Hell's Angels.
Some people have expressed opposition to the charter. Again, I will exclude my colleague from the Bloc in this regard because the Bloc does have a fundamental opposition to the charter, one I do not agree with. It is with regard to protecting French language rights in the province of Quebec.
However, when we hear people say that we must do something about the charter because it is fundamentally flawed, as we have heard the Prime Minister say, they are not really talking about that. They are really saying that they do not like the interpretations by our courts. It goes back to, as we know with the government in particular, the lack of trust in the judiciary. The government sees the judiciary as being way too activist in this country.
However, if we stand back at the international level and look at our courts, all the way from the trial level up to the Supreme Court, they have not been overly activists at all. My criticism would be that they have not been activist enough, particularly with some of the anti-terrorism provisions that we made. It took the courts until about 2006 or 2007, the federal court in particular, to begin to say that what was happening was fundamentally breaking fundamental rights. We have now begun to see them take on that responsibility that they are supposed to be doing under the charter.
I wish we would not have had this debate today because it was not necessary and there are any number of other issues. However, I want to say for the Canadian people who are listening and for the rest of my colleagues in this chamber, that there is no issue about whether the charter should be in existence in this country. It is absolutely necessary and it has an almost overwhelming 100% support from constituents right across the country.