In 1991 Delwin Vriend, a lab coordinator at a private college in Edmonton, was fired after his employer learned he was gay. He tried to file a complaint with the Alberta Human Rights Commission, but Alberta's human rights law did not list sexual orientation as a protected ground, so the commission could not take his case. Before 1982 that would have been the end of the story: in Canada, an elected legislature had the final word. But the Constitution Act, 1982 (see Unit 4) added the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to the constitution, and the Charter is supreme law. In 1998 the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that Alberta's law violated the Charter's equality rights and must be read as protecting gay and lesbian people. This lesson looks at how the Charter has reshaped Canada since 1982, through court cases, new laws and fierce debates about who should have the last word: judges or elected governments.
What the Charter protects
| Category | Sections | What it protects (examples) |
|---|---|---|
| Fundamental freedoms | 2 | Freedom of conscience and religion; of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press; of peaceful assembly; and of association |
| Democratic rights | 3–5 | Every citizen's right to vote and run for office; elections at least every five years; Parliament must sit at least once a year |
| Mobility rights | 6 | Citizens may enter, remain in and leave Canada, and move to and work in any province |
| Legal rights | 7–14 | Life, liberty and security of the person; protection from unreasonable search and arbitrary detention; the right to a lawyer, to a fair trial and to be presumed innocent |
| Equality rights | 15 | Equal treatment under the law without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability, plus similar (analogous) grounds the courts have added, such as sexual orientation and citizenship |
| Official languages | 16–22 | English and French have equal status in Parliament and the federal government (and in New Brunswick) |
| Minority language education rights | 23 | Where numbers warrant, citizens of the English or French minority in a province can have their children educated in their language |
The Charter in court: landmark cases
| Case (year) | The issue | What the Supreme Court decided and why it mattered |
|---|---|---|
| Singh (1985) | Refugee claimants were refused without an oral hearing | Section 7 protects everyone physically in Canada, not just citizens; Ottawa created the Immigration and Refugee Board (1989) to give claimants hearings |
| Oakes (1986) | A drug law made the accused prove his innocence | Struck down as violating the presumption of innocence; created the Oakes test for section 1 |
| Morgentaler (1988) | Criminal Code rules required approval by a hospital committee for an abortion | Ruled 5–2 that the law's procedures violated security of the person (section 7); since then Canada has had no criminal law on abortion, which is regulated as health care |
| Ford (1988) | Quebec's Bill 101 required French-only commercial signs | Ruled the ban violated freedom of expression; Quebec responded by passing Bill 178 using the notwithstanding clause |
| Andrews (1989) | British Columbia barred non-citizens from practising law | The first major section 15 case: equality means substantive equality (looking at a law's real effects), and citizenship counts as an analogous ground |
| Sparrow (1990) | A Musqueam fisher was charged for using a net longer than allowed | Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 (outside the Charter) protects existing Aboriginal rights such as fishing for food and ceremonial purposes; governments may limit them only with strong justification |
| Vriend (1998) | Alberta's human rights law left out sexual orientation | The omission violated section 15; sexual orientation was read into the law |
| Carter (2015) | The Criminal Code banned physician-assisted death | Ruled 9–0 that a total ban violated section 7 for competent adults with grievous and irremediable medical conditions; Parliament passed a medical assistance in dying (MAID) law in June 2016 |
The notwithstanding clause (section 33)
The notwithstanding clause was the compromise that won over several premiers during the 1981 negotiations. It lets Parliament or a provincial legislature declare that a law will operate "notwithstanding" (in spite of) section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of the Charter. It cannot be used to override democratic rights, mobility rights or language rights. A declaration expires after five years unless it is renewed, so that voters get a chance to judge it at an election. For decades it was used rarely: Quebec added it to all of its laws from 1982 to 1985 in protest against patriation, Saskatchewan used it in a 1986 back-to-work law, and Quebec used it in 1988 to keep French-only outdoor signs after the Ford decision.
- Quebec, 2019 (Bill 21): banned some public employees in positions of authority, such as police officers, judges and people who teach in public schools, from wearing religious symbols at work; renewed in 2024. In 2025 the Supreme Court of Canada agreed to hear a challenge to it, a case expected to clarify how governments may use section 33.
- Quebec, 2022 (Bill 96): strengthened French-language requirements in business, government and education, with the clause applied to the whole law.
- Ontario, 2022: used the clause in a law ordering education workers not to strike; the law was repealed within weeks after widespread protest.
- Saskatchewan, 2023: used the clause in a law requiring parental consent before schools use a new name or pronoun for students under 16.
- Alberta, 2025: used the clause in a back-to-work law ending a province-wide strike in public schools (October) and in legislation concerning transgender youth (December).
Rights also changed through new laws. Section 15 came into force on April 17, 1985, three years after the rest of the Charter, to give governments time to fix discriminatory laws. That same year, Bill C-31 amended the Indian Act to restore status to First Nations women who had lost it by marrying non-status men, a change pushed by activists such as Sandra Lovelace and Mary Two-Axe Earley. Section 25 states that the Charter cannot be used to take away Aboriginal and treaty rights. Following court rulings in several provinces, the Civil Marriage Act (2005) made same-sex marriage legal across Canada, and federal pay equity laws aimed to close gaps in wages between women and men.