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Cotler Revealingly Praises “Constitutional Revolution” Caused by the Canadian Charter of Rights

Commentary By Steve Jalsevac

OTTAWA, February 2, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – During his press conference Monday defending the Liberal government's same-sex marriage bill, Canada's Justice Minister Irwin Cotler addressed the revolutionary role that Canada's courts have played in changing Canadian law. Far from apologizing for the dominance of the courts and warping of Canada’s parliamentary system, Cotler was revealingly effusive, if not arrogant and presumptuous about the development.

The Justice Minister almost giddily traced the development of today’s situation, where marriage is to be redefined, from the constitutional “revolution” resulting from the adoption of the Liberal’s sacred, almost god-like Charter of Rights and Freedoms. For Cotler and the Liberal elite, it seems that the history of Canada began and the nation was created when their Charter, not asked for and certainly not understood by Canadians, was imposed on the Canadian people.

Cotler began, “One of the reasons that we included the preamble was to provide a constitutional narrative so that not only the courts can be assisted by the preamble…so that all Canadians can appreciate the constitutional narrative that brought us to where we are. And it begins if you look at the preamble with the protection of the equality rights and minority rights.”

Then he expanded, “The profound change took place with the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That was a constitutional revolution of 1982. Without that understanding nothing else can really be appreciated, and that’s where the transformative change took place; with respect to moving from a parliamentary democracy to a constitutional democracy; from the sovereignty of Parliament to the sovereignty of the Constitution; from the court’s as being arbiters of legal federalism to the courts being guarantors of human rights, because we Parliament, vested them with the authority to do so, and perhaps most important with individuals, groups, minorities now having a panoply of rights and remedies to go before the courts and secure protection for these right and remedies. Now individuals, groups and minorities are rights holders. We are rights claimants. Without that context, without an appreciation of the revolutionary change brought by the charter, we can’t understand how we have gotten where we are now…”

One has to seriously ask whether Canadians then, and even now, realize what was done to their freedoms and parliamentary government by Pierre Trudeau’s Charter. No one mentioned before that this would be a “revolution”. Canadians are certainly not revolutionary types. All rights, no responsibilities? “Rights” interpreted and defined by judges, and certainly not based on any traditional moral code, least of all on the Will of God or Natural Law? Pure man-made rights?

The Canadian Justice Minister continued to go even deeper into his presumptuous reverie about the Charter stating, “If the Charter, as I believe, defines us as a people, and what we aspire to be. And what we are and aspire to be is organized around the protection of equality rights, the protection of minority rights.”

He ended, “I look at this legislation as striking a blow for equality as striking a blow for the protection of minority rights as striking a blow for who we are as a people, and what we aspire to be.” Cotler was clearly emulating another arrogant Liberal from the past, who also manipulated the Canadian public with high-sounding phrases into thinking that what he desired was their desire.

Former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau stated, "In terms of political tactics, the only real question democratic socialists must answer is: just how much reform can the majority of the people be brought to desire at the present time”.

See LifeSiteNews.com’s Canadian Marriage Defence Resources
http://www.lifesite.net/features/marriage_defence/

See also
The Real Pierre Trudeau: Father of Canada's Permissive Society
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2000/oct/001003a.html

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