Canadian Charter Analysis

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom is a form of mechanism that ensures that the Canadian government does not do anything that is either undemocratic or against the natural rights in which the Charter is built upon (Source). The Charter does this by giving ordinary citizens the power to defend their rights against any government intrusion through the judicial system. A good example of this is the gay rights movement where gay and lesbian activists incorporated the Charter in their attempt to promote gay and lesbian rights. In other words, they used the Charter to challenge certain discriminatory government legislations and with the help of the Charter, the activists successfully forced the government to amend, change, or strike down
What this means is that prior to the entrenchment of the Charter into the Canadian Constitution, studies indicate that gay and lesbian advocates did not believe that "legal and public policy changes [were] likely to occur" (Smith, 2005, p.334) through litigation. This is because pre-Charter courts could not influence public policies. In fact, when it comes to questioning government legislations, the courts only had jurisdiction over a limited amount of issues such as the division of power between federal and provincial government (Smith,
To be premise. the Charter actually did not make an immediate impact on the movement (Smith 2005) which is reasonable given the complexity of the Charter and the Canadian legal system. However, once the activists gained enough understanding of the Charter, it resulted in new litigation opportunities. (Smith, 2005). This is because the Charter allows the courts to strike down, read-in, or request the government to change any government policies and laws that the courts deem unconstitutional (Boyd, 2011). Knowing this, activists change their strategy from focusing on the negative stigma of being homosexual to centering their movement around the Charter (Smith, 2005), essentially using the Charter as a tool to attack certain discriminatory laws and policies or to protect their rights from intrusive government