Federal Supreme Court & A Family's Free Choice

[cybercoma]

The Charter of Rights protects individuals against the federal government. That's all.

And you would be wrong.

Why is the federal government, a federal court, involved in an education question? The last thing that Canada needs now is a federal institution imposing decisions on a province.

Because the question is about the validity of a law that may or may not (turns out not) violate the supreme law of the land, the Constitution.

What you oddly argue is that the Constitution does not apply to the provinces, when the division of powers only exists viz. the Constitution. Applying your thinking also leads to the strange notion that provinces could create unconstitutional laws because the Charter doesn't apply to them.

Edited February 21, 2012 by cybercoma

[g_bambino]

The federal court should have deferred this decision to the Quebec court.

The fact that it went to the Supreme Court means it already went through the Quebec court system. The Supreme Court can agree with a provincial court's ruling and uphold it, but it does not defer cases to other courts; there are no other courts above the Supreme Court. Part of a province's agreement to be in Confederation is to have the Supreme Court be the final court of appeal.

[g_bambino]

{I]t just seems to me that a federal State should not force parents to send their children to a government provincial school.

There is nothing forcing parents to send their children to Crown-funded schools; home schooling is legal in all provinces of this country.

Teaching children about all religions does not infringe upon the right of free religion.

Exactly; and that is essentially the conclusion reached by successive courts all the way to the Supreme Court in Ottawa:

In the present case, L and J sincerely believe that they have an obligation to pass on the precepts of the Catholic religion to their children. The sincerity of their belief in this practice is not challenged. To discharge their burden at the stage of proving an infringement, L and J had to show that, from an objective standpoint, the ERC Program interfered with their ability to pass their faith on to their children. In this regard, they claim that the ERC Program is not in fact neutral and that students following the ERC course would be exposed to a form of relativism which would interfere with their ability to pass their faith on to their children. They also maintain that exposing children to various religious facts is confusing for them. The evidence demonstrates, firstly, that the Ministère's formal purpose does not appear to have been to transmit a philosophy based on relativism or to influence young people's specific beliefs. Exposing children to a comprehensive presentation of various religions without forcing the children to join them does not constitute an indoctrination of students that would infringe the freedom of religion of L and J. Furthermore, the early exposure of children to realities that differ from those in their immediate family environment is a fact of life in society. The suggestion that exposing children to a variety of religious facts in itself infringes their religious freedom or that of their parents amounts to a rejection of the multicultural reality of Canadian society and ignores the Quebec government’s obligations with regard to public education.

Supreme Court of Canada: S.L. v. Commission scolaire des Chênes