Sunday, July 1, 2018

Supreme folly

In its decision of June 15, 2018 the activist Supreme Court of Canada ruled against Trinity Western University in its bid to establish a law school.

In doing so the Supreme Court turned the Charter on its head, running roughshod over the rights of a private institution.  The Charter was intended to protect private actors (TWU) from an overbearing state (the law societies and the SCOC).

These two excellent columns discuss this decision at length:

           Bruce Pardy: The Supreme Court's TWU ruling is a cruel joke played on all Canadians

           Chris Selley: Supreme Court strikes a blow against religious freedom


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

old white guy says------------your can take mr. Trudeau's charter, of lawyers, by lawyers, and for lawyers and burn it anytime you want. You can also take the supreme court and impeach them all and dispose of it forever. when nine unelected judges rule over an elected parliament we might as well stop having elections.

Martin said...

Much casual commentary recently describes cartels and their negative effect on society, The Beer Cartel, Dairy Cartel and so on.
Consider that that the Supreme Court is comprised exclusively of former lawyers; the Provincial Law Societies consist of other lawyers who have a say in who is appointed to the SOC. Finally the same Law Societies can now decide which schools may graduate lawyers. There are a limited number of Law Schools in Canada, does this setup not suggest the trappings of a cozy club?
Obviously SOC judges require adequate legal training, but there must be some place in this system for input from elected legislators, whether lawyers or not.

Miles Lunn said...

My understanding is TWU's policy on LGBT would violate the human rights code and the human rights code applies to all institutions. They can avoid this by simply changing their policy on LGBT. I support freedom up to a point, but I do not support freedom to discriminate. As on the Charter, section 1 allows for reasonable limits and also section 15 on equality rights conflicts here with section 2 on freedom of religion and the Charter is unclear when two rights conflict with each other. Also the Law Society is technically a private institution too although one must be a member to be recognized so a quasi legal private one.

Anonymous said...

The Trudeau Charter is not really about laws or the preposterous notion of "rights and freedoms" but rather a style of governance imposed on the governed without the consent of the governed. I view the revolutionary and undemocratic imposition of the Trudeau Charter as the final act at the end of the revolution that came out of Qeebek in the 60's and that ultimately obliterated the Dominion of Canada. Trudeaus Charter is the anti Magna Carta, the end of Parliamentary democracy, although the facade is left in place. It is a disease inflicted upon the nation, a warped autocratic document that corrupts and coerces the Law Society into an enforcer of the Trudeau charters main dictate which is the destruction of inherent rights based on individuality and over ride them with the enforcement of ethnic nationalism all the while claiming to be upholding the "law". It is a perverse document and very dangerous. Ethnic nationalism will always trump 'religious rights" (unless Muslim), just as it will always trump individual rights as laid out in section 2b of the Charter. Those "rights" and "freedoms" are guaranteed to be arbitrary. The notion that homosexuality represent some form of tribe or some "special charter protected group" is a preposterous notion in the first place and has the stench of far left politics all over it. It is what it is... Trudeaus Charter imposes the notion that "rights and freedoms" come from the State and can be taken away by the State, guaranteed.