RSS FeedImmigration and foreign credentials
The federal government announced a plan to help immigrants get their foreign credentials recognized. At the heart of this plan is a deal between Ottawa and the provinces to speed up professional licensing applications filed by foreign-trained immigrants. Of course, the new rules will not force private employers to recognize foreign education or work experience, and even provincial licensing bodies will be free to deny any recognition. All the deal seems to promise is reduce wait times for processing of foreign credentials.
Under the Canadian constitution, immigration is mostly Ottawa’s prerogative, and regulation of professions is up to the provinces. So if you want to move to Canada from India, you have to apply to Citizenship and Immigration Canada. But if, on arrival, you want to work as an architect in Toronto, you have to apply for a license to a provincially-appointed body—the Ontario Association of Architects. In Canada, provinces are sovereign and independent from the federal government within their constitutionally set area of control. That’s why Ottawa cannot order provinces to recognize foreign credentials. And provinces cannot order Ottawa what immigrants to accept. A lack of coordination between the federal and provincial governments can leave immigrant doctors, nurses, or engineers driving cabs in Canadian cities. The latest deal is supposed to address this problem.
But this deal has limitations. Apparently, it covers only admission to regulated professions: architecture, nursing, engineering, etc. It does not guarantee admission to foreign-trained workers. Its purpose is to speed up processing of foreign credentials to see if they meet Canadian standards. Another limitation is that foreign doctors will not qualify for this program for up to three more years. And even if their credentials are recognized, foreign-trained doctors will still need to find internships, which are in short supply. The program doesn’t cover foreign-trained lawyers at all, although they can qualify for a separate arduous accreditation mechanism at least in Ontario.
Any news of fewer professional roadblocks is good news for immigrants. And the public interest certainly requires protection of Canadian standards of professional practice. But the announced program is a narrow step aimed at relatively few new arrivals. It will hardly help hundreds of thousands whose resumes end up in the shredder because of no “Canadian experience” or because their names don’t sound right. That kind of help requires not a government decree but a culture shift.
Pain or death: euthanasia again
Usually, the police raids crack houses and gang hideouts in Toronto. Last Thursday, November 26, 2009, officers descended on the Toronto Humane Society, a 118-year-old charity sheltering abandoned cats and dogs. Some of the most noted charges were cruelty to animals, which is a criminal offence in Canada. Apparently, the Society kept very sick animals alive instead of putting them to death. Assuming that’s what happened and that both managers and vets are responsible, this case may very well come down to whether keeping sick animals alive out of opposition to euthanasia is a crime in this country.
Four sections of the Criminal Code of Canada cover the crime of cruelty to animals. There are four possible offences. Three of them, injuring animals in transit or abandoning them, keeping a cockpit, and breaching a prohibition order, are not relevant to this case. The offence that the Society’s managers allegedly committed is causing unnecessary suffering to animals. “Every one commits an offence who … wilfully causes or, being the owner, wilfully permits to be caused unnecessary pain, suffering or injury to an animal or a bird…” (s. 445.1(1)(a) of the Criminal Code).
If the Society’s managers can prove that the pain their policy caused to the animals was necessary, they will be acquitted. Tim Trow is the Society’s President who faces charges of cruelty to animals. According to the Toronto Star, he is “a retired lawyer known for his opposition to euthanasia.” Assuming there is no other relevant information, he isn’t a sadist. He kept animals suffering from incurable diseases alive because he believed it was wrong to kill them. If he can prove that choosing pain over death is necessary, he will be acquitted.
Only those causing “unnecessary” pain are guilty of the crime. The courts have said that “unnecessary” in this context means something that can be avoided. And you must handle the animal for a legitimate purpose in the first place. For example, it is legitimate to euthanize your terminally sick dog, but you can’t cut its throat to kill it because painless alternatives are available. But what about keeping a terminally sick dog alive? Assuming it’s a legitimate purpose and assuming they don’t prescribe morphine for dogs, there is indeed no alternative to pain. So Tim Trow’s defence will come down to whether keeping a terminally sick animal alive is a legitimate purpose.
And that’s a philosophical question, isn’t it?
War and the Law of Nations—book review
Issue 47:2 of Osgoode Hall Law Journal has just been published. It includes my review [pdf] of Stephen C. Neff’s War and the Law of Nations: A General History.
Uttering threats
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer (I am a law student). The text below contains only my understanding of the applicable law. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your particular situation. Do not assume you can make any decisions based on this text. I do not intend this text to apply to anyone’s situation. This text is not legal advice. I am not qualified to give legal advice anyway. The purpose of this text is to encourage debate and create awareness of certain criminal offences. Please consult a lawyer if you need legal advice or help with your particular situation.
Watch your mouth. Your mom or buddy told you this in high school when you blurted out something stupid or offensive. But it’s also what the law tells you now with all its authority and with all its might. Freedom of speech is not absolute, and for some speech, the law will put you in jail. It is a crime, for example, to make death threats or to promise to injure someone or to burn someone’s house. In 2009, at least two high-profile stories of prosecution for uttering threats hit the papers. The father of baby Kaylee was charged with threatening death and causing damage in September, and the sister of Toronto’s deputy mayor was charged with threatening death in April. The potential punishment is up to five years in prison. And if you are not a Canadian citizen, they can kick you out of the country. The law may come crushing down on you if you “utter threats,” so how does it work, exactly?
Section 264.1 of the Criminal Code defines the crime and the punishment for uttering threats. If you threaten anyone with death or “bodily harm,” you can get up to five years in prison. If you threaten to harm anyone’s property or animal, you can get up to two years in prison. The courts have said that you don’t need to be violent, to slap anybody on the face, to step on a dog’s tail, or to punch anybody’s car to commit this crime. Words are enough. Of course, if you jokingly yell “I’ll kill you!” and chase after your best friend who kicked you during a ball game, the law is not interested. You must intend to intimidate when you make your threats. You must want the other person to take your words seriously. But the victim does not need to understand or even know about the threat. All the Crown must prove when they haul you to court is that you “uttered the threat.” Even if you threatened not a specific person but a member of a race or a religion or some other group of people, you can be convicted.
A special warning to those who are not Canadian citizens. The government can deport you for certain crimes, and the law may ignore how long you lived in this country. They can kick you out even if you are a permanent resident and you lived here for 50 years. Uttering threats is one such crime. Under section 36(2) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the government can tell you to leave Canada, if you are a permanent resident and you were sentenced for any crime to more than six months of imprisonment. Uttering threats fits the bill because you can go to prison for up to five years. If you are not a permanent resident but just a visitor, a foreign student or worker, etc., it’s even easier for the government to expel you. Even if you don’t go to jail for uttering threats, the conviction alone is enough for deportation. Words can cost you dearly.
Most people are not criminals, and you can even say that it’s not that easy to commit most crimes. But some crimes are crimes of mere words with severe punishment in prison. There is no freedom of speech for these words. If you tell someone that you’ll kill them, or that you’ll cut their balls off, or that you’ll burn their house, or that you’ll kill their parrot, or that you’ll stab their tires, you can go to prison. If you are not a Canadian citizen, they can also throw you out of Canada. So know the law and watch your mouth.
The new underclass
Who haven’t heard of immigration queue jumpers? The current federal government used this term when it shut down visa-free travel from the Czech Republic and Mexico. Federal officials blamed queue jumping refugee claimants. But if someone jumps the queue, it’s not refugees as much as it is temporary guest workers. And their biggest aider and abettor is Ottawa itself. Estimated 65,000 refugee claims were pending in 2008, but almost 192,519 foreigners came to Canada as temporary workers last year. A Toronto Star investigation revealed that many of them are vulnerable, abused, and prone to go underground, especially during a recession. The Canadian government wants to be in the labour supply business, but it’s not doing a good job.
The temp worker program lets employers select employees abroad if the federal labour officials certify a worker shortage in the employer’s industry. Today, most foreign workers go to farms, oil fields and into other low-skilled jobs, and many eventually end up in the underground economy. The current government in particular has let an unprecedented number of low-skilled migrants in Canada. Ottawa essentially acts as a giant recruitment agency that sizes up clients’ labour needs and fills them with people from foreign countries on condition that they go back home after two years. Foreign workers can’t switch jobs without the government’s permission. In Ontario and Alberta seasonal agricultural workers can’t join unions. And low-skilled workers can’t easily apply for permanent residence in Canada. After all, the idea is to bring in cyclical labour.
And cyclical labour they bring. Farms needs crop gatherers. Fast food joints need burger flippers. Energy companies need oil-sand workers. There are so many people in the world willing to work for much less than Canadians. Cheap labour, like any other cheap resource, can translate into lower costs across the production chain and lead to lower prices, economic growth, and general happiness. And the conventional wisdom goes that Canadians don’t want to do those jobs anyway. Temporary workers are also not supposed to strain our health care because they don’t grow old here. We have a constant supply of fresh, young, cheap labour thanks to the federal super recruiters in Ottawa. Right?
Wrong. The Toronto Star investigation revealed a widespread abuse of temporary foreign workers. Some employers take advantage of their weak bargaining power. Some employers refuse to pay their wages. Some pay much less than promised. Some fire workers without regard to their labour rights. Foreign workers often come from poor countries after borrowing thousands of dollars for the trip and middlemen’s fees. They feed their families who stayed behind. The law doesn’t let them switch employers easily. It’s not exactly a position of power in negotiating your job conditions. The Toronto Star report shows how many workers end up underground. They are the real queue jumpers, but who dare blame these abused people? Where they jump is not permanent residence in Canada but permanent limbo. They jump to a life of fear of authorities and working underground. Debts, hungry families overseas, and false hopes stop them from leaving.
They form a massive underclass—desperate and without rights—pushing many of them into crime. We have traditionally had two classes of people who lived in Canada: citizens and permanent residents. Their rights are similar but permanent residents lack some important rights that all citizens enjoy. Today we are adding a third class and even a fourth class way down the social ladder: the temporary workers with few rights and the temporary workers gone illegal—with almost no rights. Economic cycles come and go, but marginalized migrants will stay.
The government should get out of the labour supply business. If a job is low-paid, it doesn’t mean that Canadians don’t want to do it. It means the job must be better paid. And the market will take care of it without Ottawa’s bureaucrats crunching numbers in their spreadsheets. By importing massive cheap labour the federal government discourages higher productivity and wages. Unless a job involves killing people, there is hardly a qualified Canadian who wouldn’t take it for a fair wage. And if there are no takers, the job doesn’t belong in Canada.
The immigration policy should target the real issue instead of tampering with the labour market. And the real issue is the population growth. We desperately need more people in Canada, and the only realistic source is immigration. But we need immigrants with full rights, who are proud and secure and who understand and value the Canadian society. About 900,000 of potential permanent residents and future citizens are languishing in the huge backlog. In the meantime, Ottawa tempts hundreds of thousands of the world’s vulnerable to jump the queue and end up as marginalized migrants in Canada’s cities.
See-through body scanners are not as bad as they sound
According to media reports on Friday, the federal privacy commissioner approved the see-through airport body scanners. These machines show your naked body in Casper-the-ghost 3D on the security officer’s screen. Although the officer can easily see if you are a bikini model or a beer belly, the procedure is subject to restrictions and rules that create a good balance between security and privacy. Don’t be afraid of see-through scanners unless we hear some bad news about their health effects down the road.
The scanners are supposed to speed up and improve that irritating extra screening at the airport. So the first rule is they will scan you only if security officers select you for extra screening. The second rule is you still have the option of a physical pat-down. The scanners give travellers a choice between physical touching and having your x-ray nude body on the screen. If this is the case, then scanners don’t make your life more miserable. You are already in humiliating extra screening, where the officers had had the right to strip-search you even before the scanners were proposed.
The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority promised the privacy commissioner that the officer viewing your body on the screen will be in a separate room. That’s another restriction on security to protect your privacy. But it works only if that officer can’t learn your name or store the image of your body. Unless you have a gun on you or some plastic explosive in your shoes, the officers should not connect your personal information to the image or retain the image in their computers.
Airport see-through body scanners can speed up the humiliating extra screening. They give people who don’t like pat-downs a choice. And scanners seems to be an excellent security tool. As long as they are not required in addition to pat-downs and as long as officers can’t keep your personal information and images without probable cause, scanners seem to balance privacy with security well. Hopefully, you won’t need to go through extra screening, but if you do, the scanners may be just the way to breeze through it, especially if you are late for your flight.
Privacy and .ca
For years, if you registered a .ca domain, anyone could see your name, address and email in online “whois” databases. In 2008, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) restricted access to this information. Internet law guru Michael Geist hailed early drafts of the CIRA’s new whois policy as “a model for domain name registries around the world”. Still, in a last-minute change, CIRA allowed access to a domain owner’s identity for parties claiming IP infringement by the domain name. In response to Professor Geist’s accusation of a “stunning setback for privacy”, CIRA’s President and CEO Byron Holland called the new policy “thoughtful” and “effective” with the “best privacy protection in the world”.
Does CIRA’s whois policy strike the right balance between registrants’ privacy and IP owners’ rights?
Yes, CIRA cites the need to fight cybersquatting in defense of its disclosure policy. Registering domains for the sole purpose of reselling at a premium is a common problem on the internet. Few short domain names are now openly available for legitimate purposes. A more sinister extension of cybersquatting is phishing – posing as a third party to obtain confidential information such as passwords.
Yes, CIRA’s disclosure policy also protects IP rights. It simplifies contacting alleged infringers and helps resolve IP disputes outside of court. The opportunities for IP infringement in domain names alone are huge due to the nature of the internet. Any alternative dispute resolution can help relieve a potentially large burden on the justice system.
But there are flaws in CIRA’s whois policy.
Disclosure without consent impairs registrants’ privacy. It is also probably unlawful. CIRA’s disclosure policy does not meet the conditions in s. 7(3) of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, which contains the exhaustive list of circumstances when disclosure without consent is allowed in the private sector.
CIRA’s policy also undermines the freedom of speech. Whistleblowers or political activists will lose their anonymity unduly if they register a domain name referring to the organization they criticize. Instead of having to go through court, claimants need only show CIRA reasonable belief of IP infringement to obtain the registrant’s identity.
Registrants’ privacy and freedom of speech suffer irrevocably, while IP owners retain their rights and avenues for pursuing infringers regardless of CIRA’s cooperation. The barrier to obtain personal information is low. CIRA does not specify how or whether it considers merits of infringement claims. Frivolous claims that wouldn’t make it to courtroom can survive under CIRA’s laxer procedures. Citing the need to contact registrants is unreasonable because CIRA already passes electronic messages to registrants via its website. It should also be able to send regular mail on behalf and at the expense of any IP claimants.
CIRA owes a statutory duty to registrants who entrust it with their personal information. Among all the options to facilitate resolution of IP disputes, CIRA chose one that seems unbalanced and not in accord with the privacy legislation.
Citizen’s arrest
It’s one of the cases that gets ordinary people all riled up. A chronic criminal, Anthony Bennett, who some say stole from Chinatown stores for years finally got caught. A hard-working store owner, Mr. Chen, aided by two associates, witnessed a theft, confronted the culprit an hour later and then caught him, tied his hands, put him in a truck and called the police. And what do the cops end up doing? They charge Mr. Chen with assault, kidnapping, unlawful confinement, and carrying concealed weapons. The last charge is for having a box cutter.
But the cops had a lawful reason to arrest Mr. Chen. If citizens see crime in progress on their property, they can catch criminals. But Mr. Chen went after Mr. Bennett an hour after the theft. Mr. Chen and his two associates chased Mr. Bennett. It’s not clear where they caught up with him and locked him in a truck, but some running down the street was involved. Some punching is alleged. Apparently, Mr. Chen exceeded his powers of citizen’s arrest. That’s why his lawyer, Peter Lindsay, wants to challenge Canada’s citizen’s arrest laws.
Mr. Lindsay says the law “should be changed to allow private citizens to arrest people they suspect committed or will commit a crime.” So he wants citizens to have the power to arrest not only for crimes they see but also for crimes they suspect happened or even will happen.
Mr. Lindsay’s idea is unbalanced. Private citizens aren’t trained to recognize crimes or criminals. They aren’t trained safe arrest techniques. They don’t have proper custody space. Untrained people can harm someone. We can end up with even more arrests of innocent people than we have now. Kidnappers may have an easier time imitating citizen’s arrests. And the vigilantism that Mr. Lindsay’s idea can unleash is scary. The risks are just too high. And slow police response and endemic theft do not outweigh them.
The existing citizen’s arrest powers are sufficient. The crimes we are talking about are usually minor, and we don’t want ordinary people to arrest serious criminals anyway. Besides, other means exist to deter minor crime. The Chinatown business improvement area may find it less expensive to hire security guards (as it did before) than deal with civil claims by innocent arrest victims. And if the thief is really persistent, why not stake him out and do a proper citizen’s arrest on your property? All the video cameras will help with evidence if the police question the arrest’s legality.
Although Mr. Chen and other store owners in the area deserve our sympathy, Mr. Lindsay’s idea goes too far. The Crown should exercise its discretion and drop the charges against Mr. Chen. He has already paid a price for whatever indiscretion he committed. This should be a lesson for the police, for the business improvement area, and for the social services. But this story should not be a reason to expand citizen’s arrest powers. The benefits will not justify the risks.
Beware the libel
Simon Singh, a British journalist and a popularizer of science, is fighting a lawsuit. In his article for the Guardian, Singh wrote that the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) promoted bogus treatments. The BCA sued him for libel. Is it right that our words can cost us dearly? What about the freedom of speech? First of all, let’s find out what the freedom of speech really is all about. Then, let’s see why we have libel laws and what we can learn from the Singh case. The Internet gives everyone a potential audience, so watch what you say if you have libel laws in your country.
The Western culture loves the freedom of expression. In Canada, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms calls it a “fundamental” freedom that “everyone” has. In the US, the First Amendment prohibits Congress from “abridging the freedom of speech.” We value our right to speak freely, and we believe it is essential for democracy. It’s not surprising then that libel suits ruffle a few feathers. But constitutional laws like the Charter and the Bill of Rights protect our speech from the government, not from our neighbours.
Flu shots can give a different kind of immunity
Swine flu vaccine makers may get a special gift from the federal government: immunity from civil negligence suits. You may not have heard about it because other swine flu news recently got much more spotlight. First, Ottawa spent five times as much on stimulus plan ads as on H1N1 awareness. And the federal Health Ministry shipped body bags to aboriginal communities to help them prepare for the epidemic. But the story about legal immunity for vaccine makers is equally deserving of national attention. Taxpayers will foot any bill for the government’s protection of pharmaceuticals, and vaccine users may bear an excessive risk of death or injury. Although the US already offers immunity to vaccine makers, Canada is different enough to require careful study and discussion of this issue.
Immunity from legal suits in this case means if the vaccine is a suspected cause of death or injury, the law will not allow victims to sue the vaccine manufacturer. They may have no recourse at all, or the government may compensate them from a special fund. The immunity shifts the risk of mistakes in vaccine making from the pharmaceutical industry to victims or to taxpayers. Under the common law, negligent companies are liable for injury or death caused by their products. But the government can protect a company from the common law liability by statute or executive decision. The main reason is to bring vital products to as many people as possible faster and at a lower cost. The government may need as many vaccine doses as possible sooner to prepare for a coming pandemic. Protecting themselves from legal liabilities can slow vaccine makers down or make the vaccine too expensive. To get a lot of vaccine fast, the government shifts the risk from pharmaceutical companies to taxpayers or vaccine users.
Unless the government compensates victims, the vaccine makers’ immunity shifts the whole burden and risk of injury or death to vaccine users. The US government has granted immunity to vaccine makers after the 1976 swine flu outbreak, but it has set up a fund to compensate victims. This is essentially a specialized public health insurance fund. For a victim to take advantage of it, a special federal court must approve the claim. It’s also an insurance fund for pharmaceuticals because taxpayers pay for their negligence. It’s not clear if vaccine makers have to pay any premiums to get the protection. And no immunity is available for wilful acts, such as intentional tainting of the vaccine.
What about Canada? Are we at the moment of truth before the epidemic hits? Are the demand for the vaccine and the threat of legal liability so high that they are bogging down pharmaceutical companies? Or are vaccine makers trying to maximize their profits at the expense of Canadian taxpayers? The federal government refuses to tell if it will shield pharmaceutical companies from liability. GlaxoSmithKline, which has already signed a contract to make 50.4 million vaccine doses at its plant in Quebec, says only that it’s talking to Ottawa. It’s already much more difficult to sue for medical or pharmaceutical malpractice in Canada than in the US. Any immunity will lower the incentive to make vaccines safer, although they will not necessarily be less safe. We don’t know if the Quebec facility can simply conveyor doses out, or if more R&D and testing are required. Neither do we know if the vaccine will be mandatory taking away our choice between the risks of the swine flu and vaccine side effects. But even if the shot is voluntary, the government should require warnings before the vaccine is administered—that is, of course, if it makes us bear the risk of vaccine makers’ negligence by offering them immunity.
Student-teacher love can be a serious crime in Canada
Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer (I am a law student). The text below contains only my understanding of the applicable law. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your particular situation. Do not assume you can make any decisions based on this text. I do not intend this text to apply to anyone’s situation. This text is not legal advice. I am not qualified to give legal advice anyway. The purpose of this text is to encourage debate and create awareness of certain criminal offences. Please consult a lawyer if you need legal advice or help with your particular situation.
Our society is obsessed with sex. Not just in a dirty sense. We are probably as much into sex as we are afraid of it, and one proof of our fear of sex is in the criminal code. Sexual assault, sexual interference, sexual exploitation, invitation to sexual touching are serious crimes in our legal system. We want to punish sexual offenders because we want to protect ourselves and especially our women and children. Traditionally, the predators have been men, but more and more often the police arrest women for sexual crimes. I wrote about a case in Georgia where a trial court gave a female teacher ten years for a mutual love affair with a girl-student. The girl reached the age of consent but the court ignored it because the older woman was her teacher. A few days ago, an Ontario judge sentenced a female teacher for a love affair with a student. If the older women didn’t plead guilty, this case would be almost identical to the case in Georgia, except for the brutally harsh sentence. But the intricate details of the Ontario case are different enough to make this story a lesson for all adults—not just for teachers.
The legal meaning of private property, Conclusion
Click here for Part 1
Our courts couldn’t find any protection of private property from government action in the Charter. You can say that you don’t care because people like Kenk and Chatterjee are bad guys, even if no court of law convicted them of any crime. It looks like a pretty smart idea to go after a bad guy’s assets when there is a chance some sleazy lawyer will get him off. It shouldn’t happen to us because we are not bad guys. Our stuff doesn’t smell of marijuana. But the Civil Remedies Act doesn’t just target people who smell like drugs. You only need to be in the wrong place at the wrong time or even let wrong people use your property to get caught by this law. The statute specifically allows the government to take property of mentally ill found not criminally responsible or of people who were acquitted or who weren’t even charged. Again, this law doesn’t require any specific crime or any specific victim. Your property only needs to be “tainted.” The reasons are noble but the net is wide, and it’s the breadth of the law that you should be worried about. The law doesn’t work with exceptions. It targets general categories.
Because laws apply to general groups of people and don’t include lists of good guys, we should always check them for potential abuses. But this case also gives us a good chance to see what private property means in Canada in general. Chatterjee’s lawyers threw all Charter sections they could think of at the Superior Court judge. All failed. They dropped two out of four on appeal. Still no luck. Finally before the Supreme Court of Canada, all Charter challenges to property taking by the government were abandoned. And there is a good reason for that. Our modern constitutional law does not protect private property. We need to know this to understand our government and our legal system and to plan our lives accordingly. The starting point in this understanding should be the question of what property is.
Property is not a thing, it’s a relationship, as they say in first-year law-school classes. Your car is your property because you are in a certain relationship with other people. This relationship gives you a right to exclude anyone else from driving your car. The other end of this relationship is that other people have a duty not to take your car without your permission. But the most important thing about this relationship that makes your car your property is that the government will enforce it. The police will charge a car thief with a criminal offence. The courts will convict him or will order him to return the car if he took it accidentally. The only reason your car is yours is because the government lets you have it. The government gives you a permission to keep your car and to exclude others. If the government decides to take its permission back, you lose your property or some part of it. For example, if a police officer needs your car in an emergency, he can lawfully take it from you. Or the Parliament can pass a law allowing the government to take all cars with a milage below 10 mpg catching your Hummer in the net. There is no legal limit to how the Parliament can change your property relationships through statute because there are no constitutional protections of private property in Canada.
That’s why Chatterjee’s Charter arguments failed so miserably. We do not have a right to property in Canada like we have a right to life, liberty, or security. And the Ontario legislature can’t just pass a law infringing on those three lightly like it can with property rights. The Charter forces the government to follow the principles of fundamental justice if it wants to imprison, kill, or endanger someone. The criminal process is extremely demanding on the government because of the Charter, and the Parliament can’t take these rights from us because it can’t change the Charter on its own. For these reasons, our rights guaranteed by the Charter are truly our rights. Everything else are just privileges granted by the government, including property and ownership. You can say that the government is not some evil organization to be feared and distrusted, and you will be absolutely right. Canada is a democracy but the democracy is nothing but the rule of a majority. The very reason we put some crucial rights away from Parliament’s reach is to protect them from the majority. History knows many examples when democratic majorities persecuted smaller groups of citizens.
For this reason, it’s important to know what rights are protected and what rights are not. The Ontario’s Civil Remedies Act is a good example of how our property rights in Canada are not protected from the government. The public should know this, even if there are many perfectly good reasons for this lack of constitutional protection. The public should know that our property is just a government’s permission to call some things “ours.” This permission is not permanent, nor does the government have to follow any special fair process to take this permission back. Still, Canada’s federal and provincial governments have traditionally respected the stability of property and ownership. Because private property is critical to the survival and prosperity of our country, there is no reason to believe that Canadians will support any Parliament that tries to change the status quo. But we should be watchful when it comes to small abuses, especially against our less fortunate citizens “tainted” with crime, because there is no Charter challenge that can help them.
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