Sean Hayward

I can agree with that principle you suggest. Age is tricky because the government does (and should) discriminate on the basis of age. I would re-phrase it a little so that it does not refer to what the government will do, but rather to what the principles of Canadians are. For example, "the Constitution of Canada shall be interpreted in a manner consistent with the recognition of the equality of each individual regardless of ethnic origin, gender, beliefs or sexual orientation". This is similar to a part of the Canada Clause in the Charlottetown Accord. I have a great deal of trust in the courts to interpret these things effectively.

Alright. Your proposed principle seems reasonable to me. The problem I have with what you're saying is that if you make the principles as specific as possible, they will be useless for interpretation of the whole document. For example, if you start with the principle of equality, and make it more and more specific until it is very narrow and includes only "equality before and under the law", then it is the same as the right contained in Section 15 and obviously it is so narrowly defined that it is useless for the purpose that we agree these principles should be enshrined. Interpretation is not a license to modify the underlying principle, but you must realize that what seems like "modifying the underlying principle" to you today may be interpreted very differently in the future.

Then what is the difference between the principles and the contents of the document? If you make the principles so specific, they will not be subject to interpretation. Being unable to change in interpretation, they will be useless in terms of providing a reference point for the whole document. What term or phrase would you suggest as an example principle?

That's true. And Canada had to pay a $500 million cancellation fee. Is that money well spent? This type of 'Canada First Defence Strategy' is something that is well overdue, and I applaud Harper for introducing it. Some people who usually encourage tax-and-spend government programs, for things like welfare, suddenly turn into fiscal conservatives when the discussion is on military spending.

The problem right now is that we don't have a real preamble to the Constitution, so we have no point of reference to determine what its founding principles really are. This places the whole debate on shaky ground because there is no authority that we can look to for the principles.

Alright, I see your point, but I fail to see what you propose instead. Please present an alternative. If you try to make the principles very specific, you will end up with very narrow concepts that would not be open to any substantial interpretation, defeating the purpose of enshrining a set of principles in the first place.

Americans can be difficult to understand. They fought a war to become independent from a country which they felt was being oppressive and then, less than a century later, fought a much bloodier war to prevent part of their country which felt it was being oppressed from becoming independent.

That is indeed a bad thing. Minority governments are prone to extreme partisanship, legislative deadlock, and lack of direction. The only exception is Pearson in the 60's.

This is why it's so hard to make principles more specific. We already agreed that the principles should be set and be fairly inflexible, and that society should be allowed to interpret those principles and amend the constitution accordingly. So what's the problem? Yes, equality could be interpreted as meaning that everyone's income should be equal, but it could be interpreted very narrowly on the other end of the spectrum. The term has to be left in it's general form for society to interpret. Don't forget that these principles would only be in a preamble or similar section, and so would not have legal force by themselves, only in the interpretation of the rest of the constitution.

Yes, equality is very general and interpretation would change over time, but we are talking about principles, which I think must be allowed a large degree of interpretation. However, I am open to using a different term. What would you suggest instead?

Not only here in Canada. How about the House of Lords? I would say its probably more useless than our Senate. Exactly. It is simply redundant to have two houses based on population. The Senate should be equal or near-equal by province. The House of Commons should be based purely on population, without "seat floors" for small provinces, or any other distortions.

Equality is a general principle. My interpretation is that it means equality of opportunity and some degree of fairness, or equity, in the economic system. However, we have to leave the interpretation up to society, so that it is flexible over time, as we have already discussed. I suppose the preamble could be made subject to the 'unanimity formula' of amendment. In other words, it would require Parliament and the legislative assemblies of each of the provinces to support an amendment. I do not like the idea of 'entrenched clauses', parts of a constitution that cannot be amended at all. We need something to define the founding principles of Canada and the Constitution of Canada. My opinion is that the preamble to the Constitution is the best place for something like that. However, it could be put somewhere else if that is better. That was the idea behind the "Canada Clause" in the Charlottetown Accord.

I would put economic rights under the principle of equality. However, we obviously have a problem if you don't believe that equality is or should be a principle of the constitution. We argue about what the principles of the constitution are because there is no definition of them. The preamble provides context to how the rest of the document is interpreted, but also provides a guide for future amendments. If we had a real preamble, we could look to it for a definition of the principles of the constitution, and use that to judge proposed amendments. I think that the problem regarding these "principles of the constitution" that we are talking about is that there is nothing identifying what they are in the Constitution of Canada. We should settle this ambiguity by rewriting the existing preambles or by drafting an entirely new preamble.

Here is the preamble to the Constitution Act, 1867. "Whereas the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have expressed their Desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, with a Constitution similar in Principle to that of the United Kingdom: And whereas such a Union would conduce to the Welfare of the Provinces and promote the Interests of the British Empire: And whereas on the Establishment of the Union by Authority of Parliament it is expedient, not only that the Constitution of the Legislative Authority in the Dominion be provided for, but also that the Nature of the Executive Government therein be declared: And whereas it is expedient that Provision be made for the eventual Admission into the Union of other Parts of British North America:" As you can see, it is quite outdated.

They allow him to see injustices that aren't really there.

Well then, I think we may have been more in agreement than we thought all this time. I don't believe that I ever said that economic rights would have to be in the Charter of Rights, and, if I did, I take it back. I just said that they should be in the Constitution, possibly outside of the Charter. Perhaps a workable compromise would be to entrench economic rights, but put them somewhere else in the Constitution, not in the Charter. I agree that the reference to God is not appropriate for a secular state. The preamble is also, in my opinion, too short. It should do a better job of explaining the principles of Canada with regards to human rights. Have you read the preamble to the Constitution Act, 1867? It is available at the Department of Justice website, along with the rest of the Constitution Act, 1867. It is a very obsolete statement of purpose in my opinion. I think that it should be rewritten to better reflect what Canada is and what Canadians value. To my knowledge, preambles have no legal weight by themselves, but they have legal weight in the interpretation of the rest of the document. In other words, courts must consider the preamble to the Charter of Rights when interpreting the Charter itself, but the preamble has no legal weight in and of itself. That applies to all preambles, not just the ones referred to here. Preambles are designed to do exactly what we were discussing before, provide a description of the fundamental principles of the document. See next post.

I fully understand your position now. Thank you for clarifying. Your proposal on restricting what could be put in the Charter of Rights is interesting, although such restrictions would be perhaps difficult in a democracy. I would have to see the details before judging its merits. Would you be opposed to entrenching rights other than natural rights if they were put outside the Charter of Rights, somewhere else in the Constitution? We are agreed that there has to be more statement of purpose in the constitution. That is what preambles are for. There are two major preambles in the Constitution of Canada. The first is in the Constitution Act, 1867, and the second is in the Charter of Rights. The first one is the introduction to what was a British colonial document and the second one is just "Whereas Canada is founded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God and the rule of law". It is my opinion that both of these are lacking, especially the preamble to the Constitution Act, 1867.

We should have some kind of exchange program. Send the people who hate Canada to some of those countries for a year and then ask them where they would rather live. Canada doesn't lie to the UN about anything. charter.rights, I can't understand what would give you such a twisted perspective on Canada.

The truth is that we live in the real world, unlike many of your ideas.

Sounds like you are describing yourself. If you hate this country so much, why don't you go live somewhere closer to your principles? May I suggest North Korea? Your tirade is more against capitalism than against Canada. You say that we should ignore the good things about Canada because "it has nothing to do with the country" and pay all of our attention to the bad things. Can you get any more ignorant?

I think that we are in near complete agreement on the content of your first and second paragraphs. I still don't see how you would prevent any right that isn't a natural right from being entrenched. You say it should be a legal rather than personal interpretation. So who would you ask for this legal interpretation. And I know you will point to the definition you have provided, but someone has to interpret that definition. Look, I am trying to be reasonable. I decline to debate whether economic rights are natural rights because I see no purpose in arguing when we already understand each other's positions and know from the outset that we will never agree on the issue.

Natural rights fits into the principles of the constitution because it is a part of them. It does not represent everything in the constitution, however. Do you think that natural rights is the only principle of the constitution? Perhaps we do disagree on the founding principles of the constitution then. Yes, I agree with your second paragraph. I would like to emphasize that I think that no society ever has the foresight to recognize the correct set of rights, and that is why society must retain the ability to make their set of rights more correct. Do you agree? If a consensus of people all agree that eveyone of us should be paid a billion dollar does that make it a "natural right"? No, but I fail to see how you propose to prevent society from entrenching rights that you don't consider natural. The question "Does this constitute a right in this society?" may be interpreted by the citizen at their discretion. If you choose to interpret the question as "Is this a natural right?", that's your choice. I agree that we should not discuss affirmative action here. Anyway, we both have stated opposition to it. I do believe that certain economic rights are natural rights. That is my ideological position and I do not wish to discuss it any further here. We both have entrenched positions and I do not wish to have a bitter dead-end argument.

I agree, but you don't have to give up national patriotism for global awareness. You can easily have both. Most Canadians have both, as well as a loyalty more specific to their particular region within Canada. The existence of international problems doesn't disprove the existence of national and subnational problems.

One of the first things Harper did after being elected was to very publicly assert Canadian sovereignty over the arctic, a position which put the Conservatives in direct conflict with US foreign policy. Obviously, Canada and the US are partners and allies due to shared principles and geographic necessity. There is nothing wrong with that. If you are referring to the War in Afghanistan, our soldiers are fighting there because we believe in the cause and it is in our national interest, not because of "US military planners".

That is completely false and you know it. In my opinion, many of our greatest achievements were done in spite of the US, not because of it. guyser, you are correct that many Canadians are patriotic and show their national pride. However, there is that group of people that just don't seem to get it, and have the annoying habit of telling us that we're silly every time we celebrate Canada. AngusThermopyle, I think you are exactly right. People who have lived their whole lives in a country as safe, prosperous and free as Canada sometimes become spoiled and can't see how good they have it. It is very unfortunate both for their sakes and for Canada.