Canadian Charter Freedoms

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees political rights to all Canadian citizens and civil liberties for all people in Canada. Section 2 of the Canadian Charter lays out the fundamental freedoms for all people in Canada which includes the freedom of religion. In this paper, it will be shown that every person in Canada has the right to practice their freedom and religion and if they feel as if their riht is infringed they can challenge the issue in the courts. It will be shown that some of the challenges to freedom of religion can only be exerted to a reasonable limit. On the other hand, some of the challenges are valid and that policies and practices will be changed in order to accommodate the right to exercise the right to
This can include policies on clothing, practice of prayer, dress and deportment, or symbolic items. One example of this would be in the case of Grant v. Canada. In this case it was argues that wearing a Sikh turban as a part of the RCMP uniform does not violate the public’s Charter right to freedom of religion. When the Royal Canadian Mounted Police changed their traditional uniform policy to allow people of the Sikh religion to wear a turban instead of the otherwise mandated forage hat there were public complaints that this was interrupting the police figure by compelling others to practice the Sikh religion. It was then determined by the courts that by letting a police officer wear a turban as part of his or her unifrm it does not require the public to participate in the religious practice of the officer. In April of 1989 a bulletin was issued by Commissioner Inkster, to effect a change in the RCMP manual by changing the relative Standing Orders. These changes inflicted the following into the manual: (CanLII, 1995) 1. General a. Members who practice the Sikh religion may wear: 1. an RCMP-issue turban in place of the standard issue headdress provided it conceals the hair and is neat; 2. under the uniform, a small Kirpan, the
Without intention or realization these policies sometimes infringe ones’ right to practice freedom of religion and can be brought in front of a court to be challenged. In the case of Amselem v. Syndicat Northerest there was an between the Jewish residents being allowed to put Succahs on their balconies of a jointly owned apartment building and the other partial owners of the building. The Orthodox Jews said that this was breaching their right to freely practice their religion because each person needed an individual Succot to live in for 9 days during a specific Jewish holiday and the Northcrest crew would not allow them on their balconies. Northcrest argued that it went against the by-laws, that structures were not permitted to be built on the balconies and they stated that it downgraded the building value and the attractiveness of the property. In their case the Supreme Court of Canada looked at the perspective of both Syndicat Northcrest and the Jewish residents to determine whether the case made of violating the right to freedom was actually violated. The courts did determine that the rights of the Jewish residents had been broken and that the freedom of religion would prevail because even though it was policy signed in the contract of the building it did not have a significant impact on the Northcrest people (CanLII, 2002). This shows that even in private