this post was submitted on 09 Aug 2025
88 points (98.9% liked)

Canada

10284 readers
727 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] healthetank@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Its a piece of the charter of rights and freedoms that allows the government to ignore the charter of rights and freedoms, despite the judicial system declaring a law unconstitutional.

Its required to be re-applied every 5 years.

Since it was created, it is worth noting, its been used a handful of times, and only ever by provincial governments. It has almost exclusively been used by the conservative party through those years.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Thanks. What's the reason it even exists, do you know?

[–] healthetank@lemmy.ca 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

if i recall, it was a concession made by elder Trudeau to get provinces to sign off on the charter at all.

[–] kahnclusions@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You recall correctly. The Alberta premier proposed it, and it’s something they included in the Alberta bill of rights earlier in the 70s.

Without the notwithstanding clause the Charter would restrict the provinces’ legislative freedom and give the federal justices greater powers than the provincial representatives, when one of the defining features of the Westminster system is that of parliamentary sovereignty or supremacy. In the British system, parliament has the right to make or unmake any law.

The current situation is like a compromise between having an enforceable written bill of rights and respecting the sovereignty of the provincial legislatures. Without the clause the provinces would never have agreed to the constitution.