Pierre Poilievre declares war on human rights.
Canadian Trump is here to break the Charter.
The Conservative Party hates the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and wants to obliterate it. This is not merely my opinion, but now with open support for the Notwithstanding Clause, explicit fact.
On Saturday, April 12th at one of his rallies, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre vowed to adopt the same abduction policy as Donald Trump, “deporting” any non-citizen who participates in pro-Palestinian activity, be it a protest or merely public speech.
This would be a blatant Charter violation, as both permanent and temporary residents have the full protection of every Charter right except voting rights and the ability to freely exit and enter Canada.
A visa cannot be revoked for participating in Charter-protected activity. This is settled law. But there’s a rather big problem with the Charter as a constitutional document:
Jean Chrétien installed a self-destruct button.
Most people are familiar with Sec. 1 of the Charter, the “Reasonable Limits Clause”, which is self-explanatory. This is not a problem, and indeed it is necessary in order to be able to criminalize and prosecute heinousness like exploitative imagery of minors.
The issue with the Charter is the inclusion of the poison pill that is Sec. 33, the “Notwithstanding Clause”.
Under Sec. 33, any Federal or Provincial legislature (but not a Territorial legislature) may declare in the text of any law that it is exempt from Sec. 2 and Sec. 7 to 15 of the Charter.
This exemption can be passed with a simple majority vote, the same as any normal legislation, and it will last for a full five years. After those five years elapse, the sitting government can renew the exemption for another five years, and the violation of rights can continue indefinitely.
The rights that the Notwithstanding Clause can violate and ignore include:
Freedom of conscience and religion
Freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media
Freedom of peaceful assembly
Freedom of association
The right to life, liberty, and security of the person
The right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure
The right not to be arbitrarily detained or imprisoned
The right to be informed of the reasons for one’s arrest and to retain a lawyer
The right to be informed of charges against you, to a speedy trial with the presumption of innocence, to avoid self-incrimination, and to be tried by a jury
The right to reasonable bail, to not be found guilty of acts that were not criminal at the time, and the right to not be tried again for the same charge
The right to not be subjected to cruel and unusual treatment or punishment
The right to a language or sign language interpreter
Racial, national and ethnic equality
Religious equality
Gender equality
Queer equality
Age equality
Disability equality
Is it not terrifying to anyone else to see that list of basic freedoms, and know that your government can invoke the Notwithstanding Clause to violate them at any time?
Under the Notwithstanding Clause, the Federal Government would have the power to invalidate every gay marriage with the stroke of a pen. The government could empower police to round up brown people and put them into camps, and to kill disabled people on sight in the pursuit of eugenics.
Technically, the Notwithstanding Clause requires free and fair elections to still occur. But the elections aren’t particularly free nor fair if the sitting government can kill anyone they don’t like!
Sec. 1 is called the Reasonable Limits Clause because it relies upon a very strict test to determine whether the infraction was reasonable. The violation of rights must be as narrowly targeted as possible, and proportionate to the objective that the law seeks to pursue.
So by the very nature of the Notwithstanding Clause, any law that invokes it must know that it would not be considered a reasonable limit. The use of the Notwithstanding Clause, by definition, is an unreasonable limit on your basic human rights.
And now, Pierre Poilievre has openly stated his desire to use the Notwithstanding Clause, to override the Supreme Court’s restrictions on cruel and unusual punishment. And when he was asked by reporters where else he would use the Notwithstanding Clause, he merely replied that he would use it to punish criminals.
This is exactly how it started with Trump during his campaign last fall. Do you people not see that? After years of fearmongering about crime and gangs, Poilievre says the only “solution” to his invented problem is to embrace fascism, and allow the government total supremacy over every aspect of your life.
He will declare anyone that he doesn’t like a criminal, and he will arrest or deport them in the same way that Trump’s ICE thugs are disappearing innocent people. And because he’ll call them “criminals”, centrist Canadians will ignore it and say it’s “deserved”.
How long do you think it would take before Poilievre started paying President Bukele of El Salvador to send Canada’s “undesirables” to the same CECOT concentration camp that Trump does?
At least Trump and the Republicans had to do the hard work of stacking the institutions with loyalists over the decades. All Poilievre would need to do is pass a single law, and Trump-style abductions would become perfectly legal.
The fascist threat to rule with the Notwithstanding Clause is not the version of Canada that I want to live in, or that I want my younger sister to grow up in. We cannot go through each election cycle in fear that the victor will use their power to destroy our free society.
Pierre Poilievre has already told Canadians that he is exactly like Donald Trump. Are we foolish enough to repeat America’s mistake?
I hope not. I really, really hope not.
This is PP’s equivalent to Trump saying he would be a “dictator on day one”. He cannot be allowed to gain power.
This column is very good; we must never take our rights for granted.