We’re back with Carissima Mathen and the last of our special summer series of “explainers” on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Today, Carissima walks us through two last issues: the equality rights in section 15 of the Charter; and the two remedies sections, section 52 of the Constitutional Act 1982 and section 24 of the Charter. The text of these provisions is reproduced below. As noted, this is our last Muskoka Chair chat. We hope people have enjoyed this deep dive into the Charter. Please give us a shout out if so, on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts, and help other people find INTREPID. We’re back after a brief pause for the beginning of the academic year. Thank you for your continued interest.

15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

(2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.

24. (1) Anyone whose rights or freedoms, as guaranteed by this Charter, have been infringed or denied may apply to a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances.

(2) Where, in proceedings under subsection (1), a court concludes that evidence was obtained in a manner that infringed or denied any rights or freedoms guaranteed by this Charter, the evidence shall be excluded if it is established that, having regard to all the circumstances, the admission of it in the proceedings would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.

52. (1) The Constitution of Canada is the supreme law of Canada, and any law that is inconsistent with the provisions of the Constitution is, to the extent of the inconsistency, of no force or effect.

(2) The Constitution of Canada includes

(a) the Canada Act 1982, including this Act;

(b) the Acts and orders referred to in the schedule; and

(c) any amendment to any Act or order referred to in paragraph (a) or (b).

We’re back with chapter 5 of our Muskoka Chair Chats on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In this episode, Carissima Mathen from the Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, guides us through the Charter “legal rights”, with a focus on sections 9 to 14 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. She also examines some of the controversies that have arisen from recent Supreme Court cases on these matters.

Stephanie and Craig are back with the third part in the INTREPID special series on diversity and inclusion in Canada’s security and intelligence community. They are very pleased to welcome to the show Michelle Tessier, Deputy Director of Operations, at the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS). We discuss Ms Tessier’s career, and her experience and views on the significance of diversity and inclusion for a largely HUMINT-oriented intelligence service like CSIS. As always with guests, we end with a “day in the life” and career advice. Thank you to Michelle Tessier for joining us on the show.

This spring, Amnesty International issued an updated report on Chinese harassment of Chinese human rights critics in Canada. This report and accompanying issues were featured last week in the Globe and Mail. Joining Stephanie and Craig to discuss the report and the issue of Chinese-sponsored harassment are Alex Neve, Secretary-General of Amnesty Canada, and Chemi Lhamo, 2019 student president at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus. Chemi describes harassment and threats of violence she experienced, as a Canadian of Tibetan origin, during her period in student government — conduct she believes was orchestrated by China. Alex describes the more general pattern of suspected Chinese government harassment activities within Canada, directed at those who oppose the Chinese government’s human rights record and other authoritarian policies. Both guests call for closer attention to this issue by Canadian authorities, and end by describing the recommendations made in the Amnesty report. Thank you to Chemi and Alex for joining us on the podcast.

We’re back with an episode focusing on a recent development: the Federal Court’s holding that the “safe third country” refugee agreement with the United States is unconstitutional. In fact, it violates section 7 of the Charter — the very right we explored on Chapter 4 of our Muskoka Chair Chats in Ep 129. (Listeners may want to listen to that explainer first). Here, Jamie Liew from the Faculty of Law, uOttawa takes us through how the refugee law system works at both the international and domestic level, including in relation to some security issues. She then describes the operations of the “safe third party” agreement with the United States — and why it created the so-called irregular border crossing phenomena much in the news a few years back. Then, she walks us through the Federal Court decision and what it means. This is an excellent primer on a topic we have mentioned from time to time on this podcast series — refugee law — but not fully discussed. Hoping everyone gets as much from the discussion with Jamie as we did. The Federal Court decision is here.

We’re back with Carissima Mathen in our “Muskoka Chair Charts,” our summer series on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Today’s topic is section 7 of the Charter, a major right with huge implications in national security space and elsewhere. We walk through when section 7 is “triggered” — the concepts of life, liberty, or security of the person — and then the accompanying concept of “fundamental justice”. Section 7 reads: “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”

We’re back with our second episode in our special “explainer” series on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In this episode, Carissima Mathen guides us those the application of the Charter; that is, where it applies, and more particularly, where it does not apply. And we also discuss the degree to which the Charter is an absolute guarantor of rights, by focusing on two sections on either end of the Charter: section 1 and section 33. We’re always pleased to hear from listeners who find our various explainer series useful listening. Stay tuned for another several episodes as we march through the content of the Charter.

As promised, A Podcast Called INTREPID is pleased to launch our second “context-builder” special series. Fresh on the heels of Her Majesty in Right of Pod, we are pleased to start our primer series on the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Scheduled for summertime listening, we are calling this one “Muskoka Chair Chats”. Our co-host for this series is Carissima Mathen, from the University of Ottawa Faculty of Law, and co-author, most recently, of a new book on the infamous Supreme Court appointment controversy six years ago, The Tenth Justice.

In this inaugural episode, we build our foundation: this is the “origin story” of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We discuss why Canada finally, more than a century after its first codification of constitutional law, decided to embed human rights into its written constitution in 1982. Stay tuned for our continuing series through this summer.

In this episode we launch the first of our “Composing the Security and Intelligence Community” discussions on diversity in the S&I community. This topic was a focus of the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians 2019 annual report, released in March 2020. Joining us to discuss its findings are David McGuinty, chair of NSICoP, Rennie Marcoux, executive director, and Stephanie LeSaux-Farmer, the lead analyst on the review.

Stephanie, Craig and Leah West assemble to walk through a range of actual and possible legal responses to COVID-19. We talk: Quarantine Act; Aeronautics Act; provincial public health law; provincial emergency law; federal emergency law; and the deployment of the Canadian Armed Forces. We’re try to guess ahead on what might be coming, as well as looking at what has happened, and talk about some of the (legal) pros and cons. The chapter we mention in the podcast is here: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3554318

Stay healthy everyone!

If you came for Canadian national security discussions, hold your horses. We have a lot planned. But right now: this is a special podcast dedicated to our academic colleagues who need to convert all their courses to online on two days notice. In this podcast, Stephanie, Craig and our guests David Hornsby (Associate Vice-President (Teaching and Learning) at Carleton University) and Peter Sankoff (Professor of Law at University of Alberta) assemble their cumulative experience with online teaching and talk tips for online pedagogy and making the most of online tools. We hope this is useful. The online teaching guidance document Craig mentioned, prepared for colleagues at the uOttawa Faculty of Law, is available here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1uzvIJsx5K3a4Ntu5ZcAC7iySEZtyt6wh (along with some other resources)

We will be back with regularly scheduled programming soon.