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dan mcco's avatar

I consider the Supreme court as more dangerous than the "Notwithstanding Clause". They have consistently interpreted the Charter in weird and unhelpful ways based sometimes, on ridiculous hypotheticals.

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Mark Kennedy's avatar

Prompted by a desire to keep Quebec in the federation, Canada pioneered this incoherent approach to safeguarding rights back in the 1970s and 1980s--and other countries, alas, have followed Canada's lead. The notion of 'collective rights' has now taken hold everywhere, and has become a pretext for elevating what are essentially the practical concerns and interests of different population groups, variously defined (from provinces to 'peoples' to 'distinctive cultures,' etc.), over constitutional protections for individuals.

Far from "disproportionately affecting marginalized communities," it is these communities themselves that have predictably proved the most enthusiastic exploiters of our constitution's rights loophole. You want to educate your children in English? Sorry... what politicians deem the group's best interests decree they must be educated in French, "notwithstanding" your clear right to choose otherwise. This has never made sense, either from the viewpoint of logical consistency or even as a practical matter. Precedents that undermine individual rights threaten all citizens alike, whatever population group they belong to; and how can politicians responsible to voters who actually elected them pretend to speak for voters yet unborn? Who knows what language citizens in a certain geographic area may prefer speaking a hundred years from now? Shouldn't they be free to determine this for themselves? Culture can't be frozen legislatively: it evolves or it dies. Culture is an evolutionary product to begin with: if you think yours is particularly distinctive it's because it became so by serving your population group's ever-changing needs.

Groups have no rights over and above the rights of the individuals who make up the groups. Adding your rights to mine doesn't create a group of two with twice the rights, just an abstraction; and to the extent we imagine we can subtract rights from ourselves and transfer them to this abstraction we simply commit a category mistake. This is the incoherence that lies at the heart of our constitution and of all 'group identity' politics; and, yes, it promises intractable dilemmas in the years to come if we fail to acknowledge and remedy the problem. That process will be anything but easy, and not just because many groups won't perceive such remedy as being in their best interest. As Nietzsche said, "An error that becomes respectable is an error that possesses one seductive charm more," and what's more seductive and respectable than the siren song of tribalism?

And yet... this isn't rocket science. As an individual I can't abridge your rights: I certainly couldn't tell you in what language your children have to be educated. But wait: if I join the right population group and chant "notwithstanding," then I can tell you exactly that. Surely it doesn't take a genius to see that any constitution permitting this kind of sidestep has serious limitations as a rights safeguard.

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