Diagramming+the+Canadian+Charter+of+Rights+&+Freedoms

Censorship in the News


==[|Gay slur in lyrics disqualifies Dire Straits hit from Canadian radio play]== ====The Dire Straits song //Money For Nothing//, a staple of classic-rock radio and music-video oldies shows, has been ruled as too offensive for the airways, two and a half decades after its original release.====

====The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has found that the word “faggot” in the lyrics breaches the council’s code of ethics. The decision is in response to a complaint against radio station OZ FM in Newfoundland for broadcasting the song last February.====

[|Does One Word Change Huckleberry Finn]?
====A new edition of "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" has generated much controversy because it will [|replace the word "nigger,"] which occurs 219 times in the book, with "slave." (The edition also substitutes "Indian" for "injun.") Alan Gribben, an English professor at Auburn University at Montgomery, proposed the idea to the publisher because he believes the pervasive use of that word makes it harder for students to read or absorb the book. In an introduction to the new edition, he wrote, “even at the level of college and graduate school, students are capable of resenting textual encounters with this racial appellative.”====

[|Huck Finning the Constitution]
====Earlier this week, there was an uproar over a publisher's plans [|to release an edition]of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn that would replace the N-word with the word "slave" in order to make the book more "appropriate" for schoolchildren. This kind of political correctness offers no justice to the descendants of slaves -- it merely papers over a terrible ugliness that is an essential part of American history.====

====Republicans, intending to make a big symbolic show of their reading of the Constitution, have now [|taken a similarly sanitized approach] to our founding document. Yesterday they announced that they will be leaving out the superceded text in their reading of the Constitution on the House floor this morning, avoiding the awkwardness of having to read aloud the "three fifths compromise," which counted slaves as only three-fifths of a person for the purposes of taxation and apportionment.====

==**[|Canadian Charter of Rights & Freedoms]**==

====The //Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms// guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.====

//**[|Continuation in special circumstances]**//
==== (2) In time of real or apprehended war, invasion or insurrection, a House of Commons may be continued by Parliament and a legislative assembly may be continued by the legislature beyond five years if such continuation is not opposed by the votes of more than one-third of the members of the House of Commons or the legislative assembly, as the case may be.====

**Affirmative Action Programs**
==== (4) Subsections (2) and (3) do not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration in a province of conditions of individuals in that province who are socially or economically disadvantaged if the rate of employment in that province is below the rate of employment in Canada.====

//( e )// not to be denied reasonable bail without just cause;
====//( f )// except in the case of an offence under military law tried before a military tribunal, to the benefit of trial by jury where the maximum punishment for the offence is imprisonment for five years or a more severe punishment;==== ====//( g )// not to be found guilty on account of any act or omission unless, at the time of the act or omission, it constituted an offence under Canadian or international law or was criminal according to the general principles of law recognized by the community of nations;====

**Self-Crimination**
====A witness who testifies in any proceedings has the right not to have any incriminating evidence so given used to incriminate that witness in any other proceedings, except in a prosecution for perjury or for the giving of contradictory evidence.====

** Equality before and under law and equal protection and benefit of law **
====(1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.====

==== (2) Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.====

**Official Languages of New Brunswick**
====English and French are the official languages of New Brunswick and have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the legislature and government of New Brunswick.====

**Communications by Public with Federal Institutions**
====Any member of the public in Canada has the right to communicate with, and to receive available services from, any head or central office of an institution of the Parliament or government of Canada in English or French, and has the same right with respect to any other office of any such institution where====

**Enforcement of Guaranteed Rights and Freedoms**
====Anyone whose rights or freedoms, as guaranteed by this Charter, have been infringed or denied may apply to a court of competent jurisdiction to obtain such remedy as the court considers appropriate and just in the circumstances.====

**Exclusion of Evidence Bringing Administration of Justice into Disrepute**
====Where, in proceedings under subsection (1), a court concludes that evidence was obtained in a manner that infringed or denied any rights or freedoms guaranteed by this Charter, the evidence shall be excluded if it is established that, having regard to all the circumstances, the admission of it in the proceedings would bring the administration of justice into disrepute.====