Why does the Constitution include the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
Enshrining the Charter into the Constitution did not come without a lot of debate. The intention was to further extend rights, and to make it more difficult to take those rights away. The Canadian Bill of Rights, which the Charter largely replaced, had it disadvantages. As it was only a federal statute, it could not apply to provincial laws, and could easily be amended by Parliament. As the federal parliament does not have control over affairs that are provincial responsibility (as set out by the Constitution), the only way to uniformly apply the Charter across all jurisdictions would be through Constitutional amendment. Mechanically, including the Charter in the Constitution is the sensible way to achieve this. In order to amend the Charter, the rules for amending the Constitution are followed. In other words, parliament and at least 7 of the 10 provinces representing 50% of the population have to agree. This safeguards having the government of the day amending the Charter on a whim.
