The Notwithstanding Clause is an admission that what they are doing is an unconstitutional christofascist virtue signaling attack on a vulnerable minority.
Fuck all christofascists. Get out and vote these assholes out the next chance you get.
this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2023
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Children have a right to education. Parents do not have a right to keep their children ignorant. It is Orwellian doublespeak to say that they are "protecting parent's rights" by invoking the NWC. The NWC has no capacity to grant rights, it can only take them away.
Exactly. This legislation is a violation of children's Charter Rights.
The Notwithstanding Clause is the only way to legally violate Charter Rights in emergency situations like... *checks notes*... youth expressing their gender and sexual identity.
The notwithstanding clause is only ever used to suppress the rights of groups a given provincial government doesn't like. It's inclusion in the Charter was a mistake and as long as it remains all of our 'rights' are merely privileges.
My understanding was that it was intended as an “emergency brake” - a circuit breaker that could be tripped in an urgent situation, at the cost of the user’s career. But, that requires a politically literate population that would discourage its use.
So, instead we have strongman premiers using it as a hammer to point their profoundly unpopular policies through, and an apathetic and disengaged voter base willing to look the other way.
I see it as part of the broader erosion of the “checks and balances” we were assured would prevent this type of creeping dismantling of democracy.
and an apathetic and disengaged voter base willing to look the other way.
In my opinion, and personal experience, it also has a lot to do with not having enough time and energy to think about anything other then putting food on the table, or even where your next meal is coming from. Certainly there are people that just don't give a fuck, but I think that would be the minority if more people weren't living paycheque to paycheque.
In my opinion, and personal experience, it also has a lot to do with not having enough time and energy to think about anything other then putting food on the table
On the other hand, let's not pretend that we don't all waste time on Kardashians, Lemmy and other inane activities. I think the bigger problem is that we are overwhelmed with information, much of it inconsequential stuff, and that detracts from our ability to focus on and prioritize important but difficult topics.
For me at that time, the "inane" activities were sleep, rarely I had time to go on my shitty computer some evenings.
Not to be a dick, but do you watch television? A sports fan? Do you go out for entertainment, ever?
You have time for what you make time for. I understand the grind is crippling but at the end of the day the onus is on us to be politically literate and vote. If you find excuses to not do that, of course the slime balls who are attracted to power will take advantage of that.
but do you watch television? A sports fan? Do you go out for entertainment, ever?
At that time in my life, no, to all of those. I was literally almost homeless.
Who knew we'd have more than a few semi neo-nazis as premiers tho?
Actually, withholding Assent is the circuit breaker. The NWC is a mechanism to ensure that parliament makes the law, not judges. A judge may have a perfectly reason for making their verdict, and it totally makes sense to do so by a good number of the populous, but parliament is in charge and they're allowed to set the rules.
If they have to suspend the rules to make the rules, what does that mean?
Technically, what it's the parliament saying "this is the law, no matter what anyone else thinks of it." It's not suspension of law - an equal legal branch forming government is a feature of the United States. Here, like a lot of Westminster Parliamentary style governments, democracy is supreme to any rise of a kritarchy.
Except that the Notwithstanding clause literally suspends part of the charter of rights and freedoms in order to pass a law that the government deems more important than citizens’ rights, like in war time, or during a pandemic (which they didn’t even use the clause for), not to push through right wing identity politics that have been deemed unconstitutional.
Well, depends. It certainly can be used in a variety of situations. The basis of the notwithstanding clause doesn't require that rights be set aside, it can be used to identify that an interpretation of rights is incorrect. For instance, where rights have been determined in the outcome of a case that isn't deliberately mentioned in the relevant act, it would be perfectly acceptable for parliament to use the notwithstanding clause to say "no, that's not what is written in the law we wrote." The 'threat' of using the notwithstanding cause in Ontario recently in the Ford government is a good example of that. They ended up not needing it because the courts determined that the original ruling was probably 'wrong' before it was needed...
In this case, gender expression is a right that has been established repeatedly despite it not being explicitly mentioned in Section 15. (1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom (the basis is that gender expression is related to the sex of the individual). So, it 'technically' could be used correctly in this situation, but they are certainly assholes for fighting people for expressing their gender when it has been firmly set outside of the language.
Bill 101 exists to protect the culture of a minority in Canada so what you're saying isn't true.
#DrugFraud used it to shrink TO city council (the courts reversed it later) ... so Bill 101 doesn't apply all the time.
Drug Ford passed a law shrinking city council after the whole 'election thing' kinda started. People got a judge to say that's unconstitutional (and reading the reasons to the verdict - it was all sorts of crazy talk about how it was unconstitutional. Drug Ford said he would use the NWC to pass a replacement law doing the same thing, but that wasn't necessary as the next level of courts looked at the original ruling, went "yeah, the Government is TOTALLY going to win on appealing this - let's just say they're allowed to resize the council and call it a day."
Bill 101 is Quebec's French protection law that was enacted in the late 70s, don't know what it has to do with Ford and Toronto...
strong support of a majority of Saskatchewan residents
Sure, a majority of people who are old enough to vote, anyway.
Eroding the rights of people who can't even vote is straight up tyrannical. Doubly so when the courts say "hey maybe you shouldn't do that" and you invoke the notwithstanding clause to do it anyway.
Does anyone know if the notwithstanding clause has actually been used to do anything other than prop up racism and hatred?
Yes. Ontario's government has used it for good old-fashioned profiteering.
New Brunswick tried to use it to mandate vaccination in schools, but the law didn't pass. In Saskatchewan, they briefly used it to override a court ruling that held that the government couldn't provide funding for non-Catholic students to attend Catholic schools, but the case was overturned on appeal so the notwithstanding clause became moot.
Bill 101 in Quebec was/is a way to fight the assimilation of French Canadians and to integrate immigrants to the local culture instead of seeing them integrate the culture of the country's majority.
Bring in the downvotes!
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Regina judge has ruled that the Saskatchewan government's naming and pronoun policy should be paused for the time being, but Premier Scott Moe says he'll use the notwithstanding clause to override it.
Moe, responding to today's injunction issued by a Regina Court of King's Bench Justice Michael Megaw, said he intends to recall the legislature Oct. 10 to "pass legislation to protect parents' rights."
Earlier Thursday, Megaw issued his 56-page ruling ordering the policy be put on hold until a full hearing can take place.
"I determine the protection of these youth surpasses that interest expressed by the government, pending a full and complete hearing," Megaw wrote.
Megaw wrote that until there can be a full hearing, "the importance of the governmental policy is outweighed by the public interest of not exposing that minority of students to exposure to the potentially irreparable harm and mental health difficulty of being unable to find expression for their gender identity."
Megaw also said the government "does not appear to advance an argument that such treatment of the younger students is in their best interests or will, necessarily, lead to better outcomes for them from a mental health perspective.
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