[news] Can You Afford Your Charter Rights?

[Mostly Water - "Canadian" and International alternative news feed]

[![TheTyee.ca][1]][2]

Perhaps only a small minority of Canadians care about whether the gay and lesbian community in Vancouver has access to erotic fiction or comics in a timely manner. Whatever your taste in books, the Supreme Court of Canada's recent decision to deny funding to Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium in its charter fight with Canada Customs should be mandatory reading. The majority found that because the dispute was limited to only four books, it was not "exceptional" and did not "transcend the litigants' individual interests."

Debatable, perhaps, but the fuss over the facts of this particular case obscures a larger issue: if charter rights are practically unenforceable against the government they were designed to protect us from, do they exist at all?

  


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    [1]: http://thetyee.ca/images/tyee_icon.png
    [2]: http://thetyee.ca
    [3]: http://mostlywater.org/node/17005

URL: http://mostlywater.org/node/17005