The notion of collective rights usually refers to rights exercised for the benefit of the community. This notion was put forward by the League of Rights and Freedoms, an organization that actively campaigned for the adoption in 1976 of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
In its 1974 report, the league wrote: “A charter of human rights in Quebec that would be based on unconditional respect for individual rights, to the detriment of collective rights, would constitute in this field as in others, a basis unjust, even immoral. For the very right to life of the French-speaking Quebec community is at stake. »
The organization continued its analysis and added, in capital letters this time: “It is an illusion in all areas of life in society to speak of individual rights if the social conditions imposed on individuals do not allow them to develop their personal resources as appropriate, nor to have access to a collective heritage which helps them to conquer in practice their identity and their equal rights with each other. »
Thus, according to the Ligue des droits et libertés, the recognition of individual rights could turn out to be useless if it is not supported and stimulated by collective social conditions since it is the latter that allow individuals to flourish. It would therefore be justified, for example, to oblige individuals to adapt to the requirements of the majority in the case of the protection of the language, the culture and the very life of Quebecers as a community.
It should be noted that, for the League of Rights and Freedoms, the “majority of citizens” is defined by a juxtaposition of minorities, individuals and groups that include the disabled, the elderly, women, welfare recipients, prisoners and ex-convicts, etc. The majority is therefore, of course, not synonymous with a homogeneous group which would impose its will on a minority.
The government of Quebec agrees with the principle and indicates, in the preamble of the Quebec Charter, that “the rights and freedoms of the human person are inseparable from the rights and freedoms of others and from the general well-being”. In addition, it specifies in section 9.1 that human rights and freedoms are exercised with respect for democratic values, the secularism of the State, the importance given to the protection of French, public order and the general well-being of the citizens of Quebec. The reference to the “general welfare of citizens” is important because it recognizes that we are not only individuals, but also citizens, participating in a social collectivity.
At the federal level, we owe the Commission on Canadian Unity, chaired by Pépin and Robarts, the first reflection on individual rights and collective rights, which only a group, but not individuals, can exercise (the right of a union in collective bargaining, for example). Recognizing the importance of respect for individual and collective rights for Canadian national unity, the commissioners recommended, in their 1979 report, the integration of collective rights and individual rights in an eventual Canadian constitution.
However, a few years later, the patriation of the Canadian Constitution followed, with the addition of a charter of human rights and freedoms essentially based on individual rights, thus ignoring the recommendations of the Pépin-Robarts commission. Nevertheless, given current concerns, this charter opened the door to respect for the rights to equality between the sexes (article 28).
By using the definition of the Pépin-Robarts commission concerning collective rights, namely that only a community, but not individuals, can claim them, it is appropriate to ask whether the right to equality would not in fact be a right collective. But let’s leave it to the lawyers to debate the legal aspects, and let’s focus on the conceptual aspects.
Let us first recall that it was among other things to allow the emancipation of women from misogynistic cultures or religions, now protected by Canadian multiculturalism, that the feminists of the time requested and obtained the addition of the article 28 to the Canadian Charter. It was as a gender-defined group that they made this request. What united them was the fact of living in a system steeped in sexist stereotypes that underpinned a hierarchy between the sexes, regardless of the other types of discrimination they might face.
They thus formed a common front, out of intercultural sorority, recognizing the challenges of all concerning the recognition of their right to equality. It is therefore collectively that they have asked for and obtained the right to equality, so that all women can enjoy the same rights, regardless of their cultural or religious affiliation.
One of the contemporary threats to equality between the sexes is the underestimation of the importance of the right to equality, as a collective right, in establishing the social conditions essential to the advancement of all women towards real equality. It is this collective right that makes it possible to avoid a cultural relativism that can lock women into cultural or religious communities that are resistant to the right to equality.