READING: The 7 words in the Charter yielding all of Canada’s wackiest court choices

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And at the choice’s core is the right to “life, liberty and security of the individual“

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While a right to life might appear to oppose a right to pass away, the Carter choice held that if the state didn’t permit Canadians to pass away by suicide lawfully, they may be lured to do so unlawfully, which breached their “right to life.”

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Or, as the choice put it, “the restriction on physician-assisted passing away had the result of requiring some people to take their own lives too soon, for worry that they would be incapable of doing so when they reached the point where suffering was excruciating.”

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It included, “on that basis … the right to life was engaged.”

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A Charter right to bike lanes

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This is the well-known one. The one that gets mentioned usually in reviews of Section 7 overreach.

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Toronto biking activists took the Ontario federal government to court, arguing that a provincial effort to get rid of bike lanes breached their Section 7 rights. And, in Cycle Toronto v. Ontario, a judge in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice concurred.

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The entire case depended upon the argument that eliminating the lanes might make biking less safe, therefore increasing the bicyclist’s danger of passing away. “If the elimination of the lanes increases threat of damage, this supports the candidates’ position that the rights to life and security of the individual are infringed,” it checked out.

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This specific Section 7 right did end up being an action too far. In August, the Ontario Court of Appeal not just overruled the “Charter right to bike lanes” choice, however did it with style.

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Justice Grant Huscroft composed that while “judges might be lured to talk about matters of policy,” it was eventually “invalid” to do so.

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Composed Huscroft, “policy is for politics.”

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A Charter right to do drugs essentially all over

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Today’s choice from B.C. discovering a Section 7 right to traffic in drugs is far from the very first time that Section 7 has actually been utilized to liberalize the trafficking and usage of illegal drugs.

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If Canadian downtowns appear more afflicted by drug condition than ever in the past, that can mostly be positioned at the feet of an entire classification of Section 7 court choices that has actually kneecapped the capability of federal governments to sanction drug usage.

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The most well-known was the 2011 Supreme Court choice that discovered a Charter right to safe injection websites. The argument being that the lack of a safe injection website may trigger drug users to inject in an environment that was less safe, hence infringing their Section 7 rights.

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Numerous subsequent choices have actually likewise ruled that it is a Charter offense for the state to take any action that might possibly make it more harmful to do illegal drugs. A 2023 B.C. Supreme Court judgment overruled a step that particularly forbade drug users from soaring in play areas or splash parks.

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B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson ruled that it ran the risk of “irreversible damage” to drug users if the federal government of B.C. were to follow through with a strategy of asking those users to rather do drugs in a somewhat various location of the park.

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A Charter right to homeless encampments

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It is now ending up being practically regular that a Canadian local federal government will transfer to clear a homeless encampment on public land, just to be informed this is an unconstitutional offense of Section 7.

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The very first example came out of B.C. in 2008, with a B.C. Supreme Court choice overthrowing a City of Victoria law prohibiting homeless encampments in city parks, as the law may trigger dispersed campers to look for more hazardous shelter choices, hence threatening their right to “life, liberty and security of the individual.”


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