s.1 of the Charter - we have always operated on the principles of peace, order, good government - and those freedoms are not absolute under Canadian law.
AoD
Clarification, S.1 is the Reasonable Limits Clause. Fundamental Freedoms are section S.2
POGG is not in the Charter, but in the BNA Act portion of the Constitution and while often thought of as a 'motto' of sorts, it actually functions in law as the Federal Reserve Powers Clause.
Yes, those are collective rights though and not individual freedoms.
Do we not preach about an individual's freedom of association? Freedom to criticise? Freedom of person? Freedom of thought? Freedom to do with themselves as they please?
I mean we just had a spat with those bastard Saudis about individual freedoms.
We ourselves have a long way to go.
As note by Alvin the comparison is an over reach and doesn't serve your otherwise legitimate point well.
Sorry, peace, order, and good government are not individual freedoms.
What's ludicrous is lecturing the Saudis on human rights whilst selling them weaponised armoured carriers and continuing to criminalise our own citizens for exercising their freedoms.
Intrinsic human rights aren't granted by the state. They are universal and transcend any and all social contract documents.
Correct that POGG is not a set of individual freedoms, but S.2. of the Charter is:
2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
However, S.2 in Canada is limited by S.1.
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.
I hope
@AlvinofDiaspar would concur if I asserted that his underlying point was simply that rights don't exist in a vacuum. They are all granted by others (society/government etc.) in as much as virtually any right for anyone
has the effect of limiting someone else's freedom.
The question for any society is one of prioritizing those freedoms/rights as well as ensuring they are as widely (equally) distributed as possible (assuming we agreed that was an end goal)
*****
It is possible to hold the view that the Canadian state and most other nation-state governments have at times, and still do today limit the rights of their citizens, sometimes to excess without intellectual justification.
At the same time one can understand that some limits on rights will always be forthcoming or there would be no laws at all; and there will inevitably be 'grey' spaces where it is challenging to define exactly where a right should stop or an infringement is justified.
I would generally side with
@MTown that the onus is on government to show a victim of some kind with supporting evidence when limiting the rights of others.
But I also have time for understanding that not all speech can be protected, as when we tolerate certain forms of intolerance, particularly as public (rather than private) speech, we run the risk of far greater dimunition of rights.
