POLI 221 Chapter : The Charter and Canadian Democracy - Peter Russell
22 Apr 2012
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Document Summary
Sinews of democracy: capacity of our canadian body politic to debate and resolve over time divisive nroamtive issues that arise in our political life: have not been significantly weakened by the charter. Court decisions on matters like abortion, euthanasia, rights of lgbt, linguistic and religion minorities didn"t stop political debate and discussion. Most wide-spread democratic concern about the charter: spectre of unelected judges making decisions about important matters of public policy. Judicial activism became huge: judicial supremacy , rule by judges , jurocracy amogst scc critics. Problem with centralization caused by the pmo: power in the office undermines cabinet and parliamentary government, become essentially a focus group for testing support for the policies intitiatives of the pm and his political staff. The main threat to canadian democracy was not the charter, it"s the evolution of the cabinet/parliamentary system towards a presidential system of government without the check and balance of congress.
