Ok people, especially Canadians. I've been giving a lot of thought to Doug Ford's use of the Notwithstanding clause to change the composition of Toronto City Council. I'm thinking this is a pretty egregious use of a very unpopular clause that was designed to ensure the protection of basic human rights - not to advance the agenda of one premier. How does this not lead to dictatorship? If the premier of a province is allowed to decide to use notwithstanding in order to further his own aims, what's to stop him from shutting down the judiciary on everything that suits his purpose? Does the US have anything like this? What do you think? I'm very curious about it all, and worried that it sets a very dangerous precedent.
Mama.
From the States and don't know any Canadian Political news. I can say we have Trump who thinks he can do as he please and the law is going to catch up with him. In my opinion, I think if something is in writing{law} it should be followed. If someone doesn't like it the they should have to write what they want and get it passed into law to change it. I believe that covers both Countries. I do agree with you.
Yeah, it's a messy thing. We have this clause in Canada called the Notwithstanding Clause (I think your President has a certain amount of veto power, but that's a bit different). In this case, the Ontario premier decided there are too many electoral districts in the city of Toronto and he wanted to cut them by half. The Courts said that was unconstitutional as it would prohibit people from participating in the election (we are already in the middle of our municipal/local election campaign). He decided to use the notwithstanding clause which allows him to override the decision of the courts.
It's ridiculous. The clause is supposed to be used to prevent any abuse of human rights law basically, not to change the voting structure in Canada's biggest city. I'm pretty appalled by it and the slippery slope it begins. To put it into perspective, notwithstanding has only been used in Canada five times before, and each time it was during the height of a pretty critical and significant discussion.
Their premier (not mine thank god), but Doug Ford in Ontario, is a big Trump fan. And it's that part of Trump (whether you love his verbosity or not) that frightens me. Complete disrespect for the rule of law to serve one's own purpose is not a good thing. I feel like we've tried that experiment a few million times already and it's never worked yet.
Lots of Trump wannabes, but like the guy, Boris? that spearheaded Brexit, things aren’t turning out quite the way they hoped. I hope it’s just a phase and we’ll get normal, people back in office soon.
Meowmy likes debating about political stuff, nice thread! She went to Wikipedia to know more about that Notwithstanding Clause, it's so interesting 😮
She says here in Argentina we have a presidential system (like in US) which is so diferent to Canada's parliamentary/constitutional monarchy system.
That Notwithstanding Clause seems dangerous, can it really override certain portions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? 😥 Here we have the First Part of our Constitution ("Declarations, Rights and Guarantees") as "immutable clauses", they can't never be override nor changed. And if we have some unconstitutional laws it's for the Judiciary to decide, not any other power using some clause 🤨 President can veto laws, but not decisions of the courts.