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Thursday, September 25, 2003
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AT LEAST THEY CAN GET MARRIED NOW
I've never held the Canadian courts in high regard. I figured that would score me some points when I was called for Jury Duty last year. No dice, I had to do it anyway. Long story short, a really cute black girl wasn't declaring her student loan payments on her welfare statements each month. We convicted her. It was hardly "12 Angry Men." it was more like 4 yentas, a couple of Koreans, a hot schoolteacher, a few retirees and me. But I got a paid week off of work and that was nice, too.
The Canadian courts have been out of control for decades. As much as Americans like to bitch about "activist courts" they have no idea what they're talking about. This has much to do with our respective consititutions. First we'll look at the U.S Constitution and its attendant amendments. All things being equal, these are fairy straightfoward documents. For the most part, they dictate what the government may not do and what activities they are not to interfere with.
Now compare this with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. You'll see the difference immediately.
All you really need to read of the Charter is Section one, it neatly negates the rest of it. It reads as follows:
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Do you know what means? No, no you don't. No one does. Parliment and the signatory Provinces (all of them exept for Quebec) figured these things are best resolved by the courts. After all, what could happen?
I'm glad you asked. This could happen! Boy goes to prison. Boy meets another boy. Love is decidedly not in the air. Boy One stabs Boy Two with a sharpened spoon. Boy gets off of a Murder Two rap on self-defence, which may or may not be reasonable. But Boy One argues that he has a right to carry a deadly weapon in prison. My American readers should keep in mind that we're disallowed from keeping deadly weapons outside of prison.
Now, the fact that the Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear this case is an argument that there is still a modicum of sanity in this country. But this is undercut by the fact that it even got that far in the first place.
Hey, I just realized that I ranted about the Charter without screaming about the "Notwithstanding Clause" once. Maybe I'll save that for later...it's really funny.
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