> The most important right is the requirement to have regular elections so that any overreach can be repealed or simply not renewed. Everything flows from that.
Not at all. Russia has very regular elections, for example. Even DPRK has elections!
You might say that those are an obvious fraud, and it's true these days, but it wasn't always so. Up until 2011 or so elections in Russia in and of themselves were "free" in a sense that your vote counted. The problem is that you can't really have a free and fair election when things like "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression" are suppressed. If the government can control most information flow and crack down on dissent, it doesn't matter if the people can vote; it'll ensure that they'll vote the right way.
> In practise the charter has been very effective in protecting the rights of canadians. I feel that it is more effective than the american system despite the american system having more absolute garuntees on paper.
The problems with the American system stem largely from the US constitution originally being based on the notion that the federal government shouldn't be able to do anything except that what the Constitution says it can (and similarly for state governments & their respective state constitutions). While it's great in principle, in practice it means that the US constitution has relatively few explicit restrictions, and those are often vaguely worded, which then allows for the kind of judicial shenanigans that are routine here.
At the same time, if the courts do enshrine some specific right as protected, the government has very little leeway to override that.
As for Canada, I feel that the jury is still out. CCRF is still fairly recent, and you guys just don't have the history of a sufficiently intense political conflict to see how well it holds up in a crisis, and what the government might do.
> Not at all. Russia has very regular elections, for example. Even DPRK has elections!
Sure.
The soviet union also had a constitution that gave strict garuntees of freedom, much stronger than the american constitution. It of course wasn't worth the paper its written on.
Having a written constitution with rights and freedom is no different then having elections. You can do it for real or you can do it as a show. Canada's actual elections safeguard its democracy. The fact that russia has fake elections is no more a counterpoint than the soviet constitution is a counterpoint to the american constitution. Just because someone else has the fake version doesn't mean the real version doesn't exist.
> As for Canada, I feel that the jury is still out. CCRF is still fairly recent, and you guys just don't have the history of a sufficiently intense political conflict to see how well it holds up in a crisis, and what the government might do.
The charter is not the starting point of canadian constitutional law. While it added a lot of rights and is certainly an improvement, Important legal victories like striking down laws for violating freedom of speech or declaring that women are allowed to hold office happened before the charter was adopted.
Not at all. Russia has very regular elections, for example. Even DPRK has elections!
You might say that those are an obvious fraud, and it's true these days, but it wasn't always so. Up until 2011 or so elections in Russia in and of themselves were "free" in a sense that your vote counted. The problem is that you can't really have a free and fair election when things like "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression" are suppressed. If the government can control most information flow and crack down on dissent, it doesn't matter if the people can vote; it'll ensure that they'll vote the right way.
> In practise the charter has been very effective in protecting the rights of canadians. I feel that it is more effective than the american system despite the american system having more absolute garuntees on paper.
The problems with the American system stem largely from the US constitution originally being based on the notion that the federal government shouldn't be able to do anything except that what the Constitution says it can (and similarly for state governments & their respective state constitutions). While it's great in principle, in practice it means that the US constitution has relatively few explicit restrictions, and those are often vaguely worded, which then allows for the kind of judicial shenanigans that are routine here.
At the same time, if the courts do enshrine some specific right as protected, the government has very little leeway to override that.
As for Canada, I feel that the jury is still out. CCRF is still fairly recent, and you guys just don't have the history of a sufficiently intense political conflict to see how well it holds up in a crisis, and what the government might do.