ColdComfort

To rid ourselves of our own constitutional traditions and adopt US ones? I think originally people actually did think it was about human rights and the fear that a majority in Parliament or a legislature could disregard minorities. I don't think many actually believe that anymore. It's about power. Who gets to decide policy decisions. Our new Family Compact of lawyers think they know what's best for Canada and democracy can't be trusted. Yep. Political power that's what the CoR is about.

Same sex marriage was approved by Parliament so the Courts decisions seem unnecessary. There is no Women are not Chattel decision. The Persons case interpreted the BNA act on Senate appointments. The SCC has never said legal restrictions on abortion are unconstitutional. What if a future court said all persons from the time of conception were entitled to the protection of the Charter and outlawed abortion. I think you miss the point.

From 1840 to 1982 that is the Constitution we had, except for specific rights involving language and religious schools. Elections and democracy were the means to rid ourselves of bad laws and government. Canadians called it responsible gov't. Can you honestly say that in 1980 Canada was in such a sad state we needed an undemocratic means to clean up the mess. Yes. Politicians are still in control either through the notwithstanding clause or amendments.

Yes. For a number of reasons. First, the principle of overly broad legislation is not in s. 7 of the Charter. It's a creation of the Courts from previous cases. Secondly, it presumes to judge what purposes the legislation can legitimately have. That is it substitutes it's own judgement for that of Parliament. Thirdly, in deciding if the means is overbroad it does so on the basis of hypothetical cases. Normally, in a legal context you expect some evidence to support this. As for as I can tell the Court's 'reasoning' is exactly what Parliament does in debating a proposed law. There's is nothing in it of relying on a text or evidence. You might want to read this case which also creates a doctrine called the "Honour of the Crown" no where to be found in the Charter or any other law. Most of the reasoning is a particular view of Canadian history and it's colonial past. Hardly something I would call legal reasoning. http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/12888/index.do

The main problem with the Charter is it's terms are so abstract Judges can read just about any result they want into it. As a result it comes down giving political power to one class of Canadian society in this case lawyers, law professors and the like. We have only to look at the US experience with a similar document. Southern men just before the Civil War decided that Black people were not included in the Constitution at all. Later they came up with 'seperate but equal' to justify segregation. Minimum wage laws were struck down in the thirties as they found a freedom to contract in the Constitution. Today it's different values like personal autonomy; in another generation it will be something different. There is no legal reasoning involved. It's all about nine old lawyers guided by their own personal views. Many politicians like Allan Blakeney and Sterling Lyon opposed Pierre Trudeau's Constitution for this reason. The notwithstanding clause was part of the compromise that ensured their support. Politicians should use it when they don't agree with a judgement. Democratic institutions can also amend the Constitution if they think judicial power is too great.

Excellent BC! Respect for life requires us to make death clean, easy and widely available. Big Brother would be proud. I don't know you and I wonder if you're trolling. I hope so.

I find this shocking. I think this kind of comment reflects the real reason why legal and moral standards have changed so quickly. Our culture simply doesn't respect the value of a human life as it once did. Personal autonomy is an ideology and it's more important to be ideologically correct than to be concerned about the preservation of the life of a real human being. My friend 'Joe' wants to kill himself. So let's make it easy for 'Joe' to kill himself. It's his right and we certainly don't want him to leave a mess when he does it.

One of the questions that arise is the actual reasoning behind this new law. It seems to me that if it's a question of personal autonomy then pretty well anyone should be able to exercise that right. But the Court also said a gov't could confine it to situations where pain, psychological or physical, was intolerable and had no remedy. One of the concerns is future cases where someone is depressed. Medicine has effective remedies but as long as consent and mental capability is there why should we have the right to prevent such people to an easy death and not force them to jump off a bridge or something like that.

The word is Greek but that doesn't mean it was used in Hellenistic times. According to this link it was but referred to a good or easy death. The link also tells us that advocates of what we define as euthanasia start appearing about 1900. Public opinion much later in the century as evidenced by the development of laws that permit it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia

They also said that constitutional principles had developed since Rodriguez. Either way the rules are changed. The section of the Crim Code is in one case constitutional and then is not.

Any evidence to support that eyeball?

Assisted suicide. It's ban was constitutional a decade or two ago and now it's not. The Court has explicitly said it is not bound by it's earlier rulings.

Most Canadians support some form of assisted suicide. One of the things that is strange to me is that how moral opinions change so quickly and then these new opinions are held with absolute certainty. In the case of assisted suicide or suicide in the face of painful deaths think of the following. Only in recent generations have we had the knowledge to control pain. In the US civil war amputations were done without anesthesia. In WW1 those who were wounded in the abdomen were left to die as no antibiotics existed. For all those centuries and millennia before our times people died in agonizing pain from illnesses that there were no treatments for and pain management was non-existence. Think for a moment of someone, living in about 1850, whose appendix bursts. Hours and days of terrible pain followed by certain death. People had the means to either kill themselves or have others do the job for them but they didn't. In fact, until recent years such a notion would have been regarded as bizarre. What's changed.? Do people really believe that somehow we have become so enlightened that what was a moral certainty just a few short years ago can now be rejected as clearly wrong?