The country could explode in a multisided conflict involving the courts, legislatures and governments over the use of the notwithstanding clause. The feds might as well start it
One way or another, we are headed for a constitutional crisis: the only question is when, and on whose terms. Indeed, before this is all over we may be embroiled in multiple crises, pitting the House of Commons against the Senate , the judicial branch against the executive, the federal government against the provinces.
It isn’t only the courts they are thumbing their noses at: it is the Charter itself. A government that actually believed in the Charter might nevertheless feel compelled to use the override in extremis. It might argue it had been left no choice, that a rogue court had cut the very purpose out of a vitally necessary law, closing off all possibility of redrafting it to meet the court’s concerns.
So we are in a state of apprehended crisis as it is, with the nation’s basic law hanging by a thread. And that latent crisis is about to become apparent. After years of denial, the Charter’s defenders – in politics, in the legal profession, in the academic and activist worlds – have at last grasped how seriously it is threatened, and begun to rally.
And yet it may try. We are so inured to ends-justify-the-means thinking in this country – people have accustomed themselves to defending Senate obstructionism if they happen to agree with its objective – that I can well imagine senators persuading themselves they are on the side of right. Mr. Harder’s motion is intended as a shot across the bow of the Conservatives. It seems unlikely they will be deterred by it. Indeed they may well relish a fight with the unelected Senate.
Opinion Andrew Coyne Coyne Government Clause Senate Court Law Use Section Charter Saskatchewan House Of Commons Quebec
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