Just heard Pettigrew defending the PM's plan to delete-key the Notwithstanding Clause.
Turns out, the Clause was "imposed" on Trudeau, and that Liberals have never believed in it.
Ah yes.
Democracy.
Imposing itself.
On a Liberal PM.
And the current Liberal PM says he would take the Charter out of the hands of "politicians", by which he means "the democratically elected Parliament of our nation".
If there is a constant theme in all of this, it is the Liberals' distain for democracy.
1 comment:
I must be honest and say that I don’t fear the notwithstanding clause very much. It can be abused as anything can, but the history of the Canadian Bill of Rights Diefenbaker had adopted in 1960, it has a notwithstanding clause and it hasn’t caused any great scandal (sic). So I don’t think the notwithstanding clause deters very significantly from the excellence of the Charter.
...
...it is a way that the legislatures, federal and provincial, have of ensuring that the last word is held by the elected representatives of the people rather than by the courts.
Pierre E. Trudeau
From: transcript of an Interview with the Prime Minister by Jack Webster, on CHAN-TV Vancouver, 24 November 1981, p. 5.
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