Canadian Charter Equality at 20: Reflections from a Card-Carrying Member of the Court Party

Abstract

On the 20th anniversary of the Charter’s equality rights guarantees, Charter activist and expert Martha Jackman reviews the record of Charter litigation as a means to redress inequalities in Canada and concludes that it is mixed at best. Far from undermining Canadian democracy, she says, the Charter provides an important and legitimate avenue for challenging growing social inequities. Yet, low income litigants invoking the Charter have met with limited success due to a series of presumptions, including that social policy is beyond the legitimate purview of the courts, and that the state is neutral in its dealings with the poor. All in all, the relationship between rights and democracy is far more nuanced than the Charter critics argue, she says, and the real question, to her, is not whether the Charter and the so-called Court Party are destroying democracy, but rather how the Charter’s equality rights can inform and contribute to further strengthening the underlying values of our democratic system.

Note: Downloadable document is in English and French.

Keywords: Charter, Canada, Canadian, law, legal, litigation, equality, inequality, democracy, inequity, social, low income, political, politics, party, poverty, policy, courts, rights