Book Reviews : DAVID SCHNEIDERMAN AND KATE SUTHERLAND (EDS), Charting the Consequences: The Impact of Charter Rights on Canadian Law and Politics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997, 355 pp., £15.00
| Date | 01 December 1998 |
| Published date | 01 December 1998 |
| DOI | 10.1177/096466399800700421 |
| Author | Carl F. Stychin |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
602
DAVID
SCHNEIDERMAN
AND
KATE
SUTHERLAND
(EDS),
Charting
the
Consequences:
The
Impact
of
Charter
Rights
on
Canadian
Law
and
Politics.
Toronto:
University
of
Toronto
Press,
1997, 355
pp.,
£15.00.
Schneiderman
and
Sutherland
have
assembled
an
impressive,
interdisciplinary
collec-
tion
of
10
essays
analysing
the
impact
of
the
Canadian
Charter
of
Rights
and
Free-
doms
on
various
social
actors
and
arenas
of
political
struggle.
Given
the
increasingly
common
invocation
of
rights
discourse
in
the
United
Kingdom,
this
analysis
of
the
Charter,
15
years
after
its
inception,
provides
important
lessons
for
British
and
other
observers
of
constitutional
rights
struggles.
The
contributors
skilfully
avoid
’grand
theories’
of
the
impact
of
rights
discourse,
focusing
instead
on
particular
contexts.
They
demonstrate
the
varying
impact
of
the
Charter
on
different
social
actors
and,
simultaneously,
the
impact
of
those
actors
on
the Charter.
One
of
the
central
themes
is
a
consideration
of
the
relationship
between
consti-
tutional
rights
discourse
and
territorial
or
spatial
identities
within
a
federal
system.
This
is
of
particular
relevance
to
Quebec,
the
government
of
which
has
never
officially
recognized
the
legitimacy
of
the
Charter.
In
this
regard,
Yves
de
Montigny
demon-
strates
that
while
the
Supreme
Court
of
Canada
has
generally
acknowledged
the
importance
of
geographic
diversity
and
decentralization,
this
logic
has
not
always
been
extended
to
Quebec
with
respect
to
provincial
attempts
to
protect
the
French
language.
From
a
different
provincial
perspective,
Ian
Urquhart
explores
the
ambiva-
lent
and
sometimes
hostile
reaction
of
the
Alberta
government
to
the
Charter,
which
has
led
to
reluctance
in
the
implementation
of
measures
to
comply
with
judicial
decisions.
This
legislative
conservatism
has
often
had
widespread
public
approval,
and
both
essays
lead
to
interesting
questions
about
the
success
of
the
Charter’s
goal
of
forging
a
strong
sense
of
Canadian
citizenship.
The
issue
is
also
raised
by
Joel
Bakan
and
Michael
Smith,
who
examine
the
relation-
ship
between
Charter
rights
discourse
and
nationalist
movements
amongst
Quebecois
and
First
Nations
peoples.
They
underscore
how
the
deployment
of
rights
discourse
by
social
movement
actors
frequently
gets
translated
into
dominant
ideological
dis-
courses
of
anti-collectivism
and
formal
equality.
Such
an
articulation
is
severely
lim-
iting
for
those
actors
whose
claims
to
individual
rights
are
filtered
through
allegiances
to
historically
oppressed
nationalist
movements
within
Canada.
In
this
regard,
claims
to
collective
rights
are
erroneously
constructed
within
dominant
discourses
as
irreconcilable
with
rights
of,
for
example,
gender
equality.
This
construction
has
been
particularly
true
in
the
case
of
First
Nations
claims
to
self-government.
John
Borrows
provides
an
important
analysis
of
how
Charter
prin-
ciples
can
be
deployed
simultaneously
by
First
Nations
with
claims
of
collective
rights
to
self-government.
Aboriginal
traditions
and
customary
understandings
can
inform
Charter
rights
discourse,
providing
’First
Nations
with
an
opportunity
to
recapture
the
strength
of
principles
which
were
often
eroded
through
government
interference’
(p.
170).
In
this
way,
the
false
dichotomization
of
individual
and
collective
claims
can
be
challenged.
Another
key
theme
of
the
collection
is
the
relationship
between
rights
discourse
and
the
so
called
’special
interest’
groups,
which
are
sometimes
alleged
by
conserva-
tive
actors
to
be
fragmenting
Canadian
citizenship
through
their
turn
to
Charter
rights.
Of
course,
one
such
(seldom
acknowledged)
’special
interest’
is
the
business
community,
and
Richard
Bauman
explores
how
business
interests
have
been
well
served
by
the
Charter.
While
the
Supreme
Court
of
Canada
generally
has
been
unwill-
ing
to
recognize
rights
of
organised
labour
or
individual
employees,
business
fre-
quently
has
been
the
beneficiary
of
the
Charter,
despite
the
fact
that
the
judiciary
generally
chooses
to
characterize
rights
in
’human’
terms.
Another
group
sometimes
viewed
as
a
Charter
’winner’
is
the
lesbian
and
gay
community,
and
Didi
Herman
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