Section 28 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section 28 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a part of the Constitution of Canada. It does not contain a right so much as it provides a guide as to how to interpret rights in the Charter. Specifically, section 28 addresses concerns of sexual equality, and is analogous to (and was modelled after) the proposed Equal Rights Amendment in the United States.

The section reads:

28. Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.

In 1981, as Canada revised its constitution and included a new Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadian women added gender equality wording that other jurisdictions now use as a model.

Canada’s Section 28 reads, “Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, all the rights and freedoms herein are guaranteed equally to mal and female persons.” Compare this to the 2001 gender equality guarantee in Section 44 of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Persons: “All the rights and freedoms recognized herein are equally guaranteed to male and female Indigenous individuals."

In 1979, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announced his intention to re-patriate Canada’s constitution – to make it a document of the Canadian and not the British Parliament – in order to recognize Quebec and French Canada. He was also determined to include a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Canada already had a Bill of Rights, but it had no constitutional authority. Courts could only recommend legislative change, not strike down laws. However, the new Charter contained exactly the same wording as the Bill of Rights, which had consistently failed to advance equality.

At that time, there were 355 women’s groups in Canada with funding to advance gender equality, including the National Association of Women and the Law, and the umbrella coalition group, the National Action Committee on the Status of Women. The government’s arms-length agency, the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women (CACSW), commissioned research into what kind of wording would advance equality and published a book as well as several papers. The book recommended something different from the government.

The Liberal government did accept NAWL’s recommended addition to Section 15, Equality Rights, a clause that guarantees “equal benefit and protection of the law” along with equality “before and under the law.” [With this clause in Sec.15, Canadian courts recognized same sex marriage in 2005.]

CACSW’s President, Doris Anderson, found herself in conflict with the Minister responsible for women’s issues, who was then Lloyd Axworthy. The CACSW scheduled a national conference for 200 women to discuss the constitution – twice – and cancelled both times. The second time, Doris Anderson resigned, citing government interference. Women’s groups decided to form an Ad Hoc Committee and hold the conference themselves. On February 14, 1981, 1300 women arrived from all across Canada for this spontaneous conference on Parliament Hill. They drew up a list of 13 resolutions. The conference organizers found themselves taking those resolutions to the government and lobbying for implementation. After a demanding month of meetings, on March 18, feminist lawyers found themselves negotiating the wording of Section 28. And it was included when the government introduced the revised constitution in April, a month later.

However, provincial governments had challenged the Prime Minister’s right to create a new constitution without including them. On September 28, 1981, Canada’s Supreme Court ruled that although a new constitution would intrude on provincial powers, the federal government did have the right to go ahead – but a constitutional “convention” suggested provincial consent would be a good idea. Pierre Trudeau convened a Premier’s conference, which resulted in an early morning document called the “Kitchen Accord.” Premiers demanded a new Section 33 with an “override clause” that would allow them to pass legislation that was not in compliance with rights provisions of the Charter, if the legislation began with “Notwithstanding....” Notwithstanding what? The Premiers had not been clear. Their staff started sweeping up all the fundamental rights, naming Section 2, section 7 through 15 – and they added in Section 28.

So in November, women’s groups mobilized again. This time they lobbied all ten provincial Premiers, demanding they clarify that Section 28 was never part of their negotiations. Some premiers were out of town, some provinces were in mid-election, some had their own concerns, such as Indigenous people’s rights, and refused to budge until their other concerns were addressed. Finally, after thousands of telegrams and phone calls, all ten premiers agreed. On November 24, Section 28 was declared free of the override.

The story of Section 28 marked a breakthrough in women’s rights, and introduced equality wording that other countries since have incorporated in their legislation.

Jean Chretien, then the Justice Minister sent a letter to key organizer Rosemary Billings that said, “The government was most impressed by the Ad Hoc Conference onWomen and the Constitution held in February. The proposals for amendments to the Charter were closely examined and it was felt that the above amendment (28) covered virtually all of the legitimate concerns and trust that you will now agree that we have a Charter the women of Canada can proudly support as fully protective to their rights and equality.”

References:

Indigenous women have found remedy (of sorts) under Sections 15 and 28. At least, Sharon McIvor based her successful Indian Act challenge on Sections 15 and 28. As mentioned, the LGBTQ community in Canada won equal marriage in a fairly short time, under Sec. 15. When lawyer Beverly Baines reviewed court challenges launched specifically under Sec. 15, she found that women had made progress in the first 20 years under the Charter -- especially when men lost cases citing gender equality -- but of course, there is always room for improvement. Equality jurisprudence under the Sections 15 and 28 may still be very new, in legal terms, but statistics show that since 1982, Canadian women have made significant advances in every area of public life -- much greater advances than women in the US, for example.

History

Earlier efforts by feminist organizations and the Advisory Council on the Status of Women to include more sex equality in the Charter were met with lack of cooperation from Ottawa, leading to Chatelaine magazine editor Doris Anderson resigning from her position in the negotiations. In February and March 1981, 1,300 women came to Ottawa to stage demonstrations in favour of more sexual equality guarantees in the Charter. The content of section 28 thus first appeared in the April 1981 draft of the Charter, but in November it had to be diluted to placate Saskatchewan premier Allan Blakeney. Section 33 could now limit section 28, as Blakeney argued the section would otherwise endanger the traditional supremacy of elected bodies. If Straight from the Heart, the memoir of Jean Chrétien, Attorney General of Canada during the Charter negotiations, is to be believed, Chrétien felt the dilution was not very problematic because he expected women's protests would convince Saskatchewan to drop the issue. This is indeed what happened; one of the most vocal leaders of the protest against Blakeney's move was Anderson.