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            The Charter of Rights Part I

                By E Scholz

    I have been speculating about the role of the Charter of Rights (April 17, 1982) in holding back or smoking worse police corruption and abuses of power. As someone how was overall against the Charter when it was created, on the belief that having a law that makes it illegal to break the law is not very effective and just a waste of time I have been over time slowly converted to the value of having a Charter. 

    The Charter, as my mother produced, caused many initial problems as common sense bending or breaking of civil rights were made illegal. The first big change negative change was that those who were insane and treated well by the state where soon homeless, creating a huge homeless problem in the major cities of Canada. Before, when someone was mentally ill they would be committed against their will and feed, housed and eventually cured (in some cases.)  Now, under the charter, they can only be committed in extreme situations; for example they pose an immediate danger to others or themselves or have done some criminal act.  Now, many are committed for a day or two, treated enough so they are still sick, but not sick enough to hold against their will, and they end up wandering the streets, damaged and in pain.

    The last major bad consequence of the Charter was more mixed. The courts were and are over following with cases, far beyond the amount that they can handle. Cases could take decades before they were heard by the courts - bad for society when criminals run free waiting their trial, and bad for the innocent who need to clear their name. The Charter solution? Throw out all cases taking two years or longer to get to trail. Fair, yes. Practical, no. Thousands of cases where thrown out because of the huge backlog of unfinished cases - which meant that in many cases serious offenders went free - even ones with very strong cases against them.  Potentially rapists, murders, serial drunk drivers and the rest walked away with no consequences and in fact could never again be charted for the crimes they commited.

    The positive side of this was of course it made the public aware - and if the public acted - would force the government to act and fix the underresoched court system.  The court system was broken and without the Charter the public would never have noticed. It would eventually deteriorate to such an extent the professional criminals could just chose to due crimes they would know would never reach the courts - even if the  case was never thrown out as long as bail was an option it would as the courts did not exist. The government has yet to act, years later to fix the fundamental problems instead going for quick fixes - but eventually the public might care enough to make it an election issue. 

    With these defects why did I slowly change in favour of the Charter? Well, as said, some of the failures were equally mixed - some good and some bad.  Some Charter wins where clear success … (to be continued)