The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has again condemned the use of the notwithstanding clause by the Legault government within the framework the law on the secularism of the stateat the time when the debates on its constitutionality open before the Court of Appeal.
Posted at 8:07 p.m.
The leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (PLC) was in Montreal on Monday evening as part of a partisan activity organized in a hotel in the borough of Saint-Laurent.
“Using the notwithstanding clause has always been seen as a last resort, something that creates a penalty, a cost, for the politician who puts it forward,” he said after a long preamble about the Canadian “values”.
However, henceforth, the use of the notwithstanding clause, better known as the “notwithstanding clause”, which allows a law to be exempted from the charters of rights, is carried out even before the examination by the courts of the legislative texts, has remarked Justin Trudeau.
“It’s not fair to proactively suspend the fundamental rights of the population,” he said, giving as an example the popular discontent faced by the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, after having wanted to impose employment contracts on its teachers through legislation using the notwithstanding clause.
The Court of Appeal began its hearings Monday on the challenges to Bill 21. The first of the ten topics to be addressed was precisely the legitimacy of the use of the notwithstanding provision to exempt the State Secularism Actalso known as “Bill 21”, to the charters of rights.