On June 27, 1975, the National Assembly unanimously adopted the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. Forty-seven years later, this Quebec charter is one of the reasons that make me proud to be a Quebecer. Guarantor of our rights and freedoms, it represents, in particular through the progressiveness of its provisions against discrimination, the openness and desire for real equality of the people of Quebec. However, for some, including Minister Jolin-Barrette, the Quebec charter has a rival: the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Yet, in many ways, these two documents are similar. Indeed, they guarantee substantially the same rights and freedoms and are both accompanied by a provision of derogation. There is, however, one fundamental difference that cannot be ignored: the editing process.
To change the Canadian charter, you have to change the Constitution. Thus, if the federal government ever decided to rearrange the rights and freedoms guaranteed in this document, it would have to engage in a complex process which, in addition to requiring the consent of the House of Commons and the Senate, would have to obtain the support of the legislatures of seven provinces representing 50% of the population of Canada. In other words, it is a very complex process which has, in the past, systematically failed. For its part, the Quebec charter can be modified by a simple majority in the National Assembly. This is how it was changed, without unanimity and under gag order, in 2019, by the CAQ government. A first in the history of modifications to this document.
In their very essence, charters of rights exist to limit the power of government and ensure that certain freedoms, considered fundamental, cannot be unduly violated by the vagaries of politics. They are safeguards against authoritarian excesses and are at the heart of the social contract between the people and their government. That a government can, by a simple majority, modify a charter of rights and, thereby, rearrange the limits of its power makes the freedoms enshrined in this document, in certain respects, precarious.
This is why those who, like the minister, want to see the Quebec charter one day prevail over the Canadian charter, an impossibility in the current Canadian constitutional structure, should think about a more restrictive framework for its amendment process. The legal incarnation of the Quebec social contract should not be at the mercy of a simple stroke of the legislative pencil by the majority of the moment. It is, after all, about the legitimacy of this document so fundamental and so dear to our nation.