This week I was fortunate in that I was exposed to a lot of content regarding CAP stream Law & Society. The first was the CAP seminar that was held, where a variety of professors that lecture in this stream got together to give us a presentation on how each of the courses in this stream are interconnected, and how these connections benefit in our understanding of Law & Society. I was also able to attend “Town Hall on Quebec’s Charter of Values,” thanks to being notified of it’s existence in my Political Science class. I was enjoying the public lecture by Stephane Dion when I realized how well this ties into what we have been reading and learning in ASTU 100.

The Quebec Charter of Values is an extremely controversial issue currently in circulation amongst Canadians from coast to coast. Here are some of the more interesting points in the Charter that relate directly to the issues of Human Rights we are covering in ASTU 100.

One idea set forth in the Quebec Charter of Values is “using context to limit freedoms in a different context” as Dion puts it. This relates to the article we have read by Louis Menand, “The Rise and Fall of the Voting Rights Act,” which explores the authority given to enforce the law, not necessarily for the “intent”, but for the “effect”. The intent of some of the ideas in the Charter is to make the face of government “neutral” but the effect will be limited to religious freedoms that most Canadians would deem unjust, and the consequences of not abiding by these terms would be the inability to hold employment in the public sector. In a diverse and multicultural country such as Canada, the policies of religious freedom should be accepted and encouraged, or at the very least, tolerated. As Dion said, “tolerance isn’t about the things you like it’s about the things you don’t.” This can be seen in Quebec as the government’s inability to tolerate the religious freedoms of its people. Just as the Shelby V. Holder Act is taking away voting rights from American citizens, the Quebec Charter of Values is undermining the rights of Canadian citizens to express themselves freely without fear of discrimination. This dramatic deterioration seen in both cases is a devastating blow to basic human rights that we as two nations have worked so hard to achieve.

The taking away of what we have determined to be allowed in our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the reversal of an historic act of equalization in the United States shows how tentative laws are, and how laws can change and discriminate against specific groups of people very quickly. Hopefully, with enough support, both of these discriminatory laws can be reversed, and even more so, hopefully the people of both countries can find forgiveness.

The Truth and Reconciliation events that took place in Vancouver and all across Canada this past week were truly an eye-opening experience. While a difficult subject to approach, the implementation of the residential schools by the Canadian government is simply a part of our history as a people, a history that we must acknowledge and make amends for, and the human rights violations committed by the churches in accordance with government regulation were atrocious. We like to see ourselves, as Canadians, as these sort of “do-gooders”, as a people that are simply nice and accepting of others. While we have definitely moved towards that goal, we must remember that residential schools
are not just a horrific memory of a past long ago; they were in place up until much more recently than I think most Canadians realize- and because of this, I believe that we still have a long way to go in finding total acceptance and equality among our people. The idea that we could simply erase a culture is disgusting. As a country, we promote multiculturalism, and the idea of freedom is enshrined in our constitution, yet we believed, and not for a short period of time, that we could eradicate a certain culture’s very way of life. We are of course a bilingual country, and all around us in this city especially we hear languages such as: Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi, German, Italian, and a myriad of other languages; yet despite this general acceptance, we thought it acceptable to prevent indigenous children from speaking the language that their ancestors have spoken for centuries. This is not simply confusing, this lack of acceptance; it is downright disturbing and disappointing that we allowed this to go on for as long as it did. Not only did Canada attempt to destroy a culture through language limitations, but also separated children from their families in order to do so. And after all of that, the children were still subject to mental, physical and sexual abuse; some acts carried out by none other than people of the Anglican Church and Canadian Government. This information all seems surreal upon first glance. To think of the Canada that we live in was capable of implementing such things is not an easy concept to grasp. Through the events circulated by Truth and Reconciliation I learned how easy it is to let ignorance blind Canadians from the truth; and I am so grateful to be able to be apart of the Canada that is in the beginning of the rectification of that tragedy; and for providing the necessary information to allow all Canadians to become more aware of our nations history. I sincerely hope that through the testimonies put forth through truth and reconciliation it will help ensure that events like the ones that took place at the residential school, and any other injustices that may be brought on to any other group, will never be allowed to terrorize our people ever again.

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Hey guys! My name is Jessie, I am a first year CAP student in the Law & Society stream. I will be posting about the materials covered in Astu 100 L01.