If Carney wants to amend the Constitution, then he should just amend the Constitution
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s request for the Supreme Court of Canada to provide guidance on the use of the notwithstanding clause may seem rather technical, but it’s actually quite radical. In practice, it risks disrupting the delicate balance in our constitutional system in favour of judicial supremacy.
Section 33 of the Charter—the notwithstanding clause—is plain in its language and unambiguous in its meaning. For more than 40 years, its origins and purpose have gone constitutionally uncontested.
That’s because the whole point of the provision (which was a linchpin of the constitutional rounds of the early 1980s) was to balance judicial supremacy with parliamentary sovereignty. Think of it as a system of judicial review but with a democratic backstop ...
CLICK HERE for the full story

Comments
Post a Comment