The Pros And Cons Of The Canadian Charter

The Charter is the center to which all Canadian rights circle around. It is what allows Canadians to freely express themselves. The Charter protects the rights and freedoms of every single individual in Canada. However, the Charter is especially large and covers many topics and so it tends to conflict itself. Seen in the case of speaking rights where, freely speaking about a topic can to lead to hate speech which can be a criminal offence. Religious rights also are sometimes impeached as sometimes allowing one person to follow their religious rights might hamper another person’s rights. Another way that the Charter may cause the impeachment of one person’s rights to protect another’s rights is seen in the case of equality rights and a person’s

Under the charter people are free to practice their religion and express their beliefs. However even this has limitations in many cases practicing one’s religion has led to the impeachment of another’s rights. An example of religious rights being violated to protect another’s is seen the case of a Sikh teen wearing a kirpan3. In Sikhism, a person is tasked with wearing one of five different items always, to symbolize their belief in their top most religious figure. One of them being a kirpan which is a small knife or ceremonial dagger. It is meant to symbolize protection of the weak and self-defense but, wearing of such a weapon has been argued to be dangerous to those around such person as it is still a lethal weapon. Teachers believed that the student should not be able to wear the weapon on school grounds as it endangered the safety of nearby students. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in favor of individuals arguing that such a weapon impeached their rights to safety and as such the Supreme Court banned the wearing of such a weapon in places like school to protect the safety of the people4, even though this violates the religious rights of Sikhs. These cases of the niqab and kirpan show that a person’s religious rights can be violated if it violates another person’s right to safety and

In my eyes the solution to this problem is to make the ruling based upon protection of a person’s wellbeing first. I don’t believe it fair for one person to endanger another person or a group of people just so that they can express what they believe. A person’s safety is something sacred that a society should work to protect. This works around something called the reasonable limits clause6, which works to protect all rights up until they promote hate speech, violence or inequality. To solve conflicts I believe it best serves the interest of the people to violate the right that could endanger another person. Another way such conflicts could be solved is by violating the right that effects the least number of people. As in make the ruling based upon making the least damage to a certain group or people. Such in the example of LGBTQ students using different washrooms, I believe a person should use the washroom based on biological sex and not gender identity as doing otherwise could endanger other people in a very private