According to a new Ipsos poll commissioned by the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) to mark the 150th Anniversary of Canada’s first Constitution, a majority of Canadians believe that either the people or their representatives should have the final say in interpreting a Charter right when there is a disagreement over what it means.
When it comes to how judges interpret the Constitution, a large majority of Canadians are originalists, split between wanting courts to follow the original intent of the drafters (33%) or the plain language of the text (44%). Only a quarter (23%) say they prefer that judges interpret the Constitution according to what they believe is best for Canadian society.
Canadians also generally agree with Supreme Court justices being bilingual, with majorities in all provinces saying they would support such a law.
Canadians divided on who should have the final say on what Charter rights mean
- When asked who should have the final say in interpreting a Charter right, only 39% of Canadians think it should be judges, with the rest (61%) split between a majority of Parliament (22%) and a national referendum (39%).
- Quebec is an outlier, with 49% believing the final say should belong to judges, and only 15% choosing a majority of Parliament.
- SK/MB and Atlantic Canada are the only jurisdictions in which a majority agree on an option, with 52% and 51% narrowly opting for a national referendum, respectively.
Canadians reject judicial interpretation of Constitution
- Less than a quarter (23%) of Canadians believe the Constitution should be interpreted according to what judges believe is best for society.
- 44% prefer textual originalism, interpreting the Constitution according to the plain meaning of its words, while 33% prefer a jurisprudence of original intent.
- In Quebec, only 25% support the original intent of the drafters of the Constitution, the lowest in the country, while 35% trust the opinions of judges about what is best for Canadian society, the highest in the country.
- By contrast, in SK/MB 46% support the original intent of the drafters, while only 13% trust the opinion of judges.
- Alberta is the country’s most textualist province, with 54% saying the Constitution should be interpreted according to its plain meaning.
Bilingualism:
- 68% of Canadians support requiring Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada to be bilingual, with the highest support in Quebec (92%) vs. only 55% in BC.
For a deeper look of the above polling data, see here.
What is Constitution Day?
Both the Constitution Act, 1867, and the Constitution Act, 1982, were signed on March 29th, which the CCF has dubbed Canada’s “Constitution Day.” The CCF encourages all Canadians to mark Constitution Day by reading Canada’s primary constitutional documents, or about them, or to watch Chief Justice Glenn Joyal’s recent speech at the CCF’s Law & Freedom Conference on the development of Canadian constitutionalism post-1982, which is available on YouTube and on the CCF website here.
Quotes:
“Canadians prefer their judges to be originalists, not activists. More than three-quarters of Canadians believe that judges should stick to what the drafters intended and to the plain meaning of the Constitutional text, rather than interpreting it according to their personal view of what is best for society. In this, Canadians stand apart from the consensus of the legal academy, which favours a politically active judiciary.”
Howard Anglin
Canadian Constitution Foundation
Executive Director
“Canadians have at least as much faith in the people themselves to decide what our Charter rights mean as they do in judges. Overall, more than half of Canadians would prefer that a disagreement over the meaning of a Charter right be decided either by the people via a referendum or by the people’s representatives in Parliament, rather than by unelected judges.”
Howard Anglin
Canadian Constitution Foundation
Executive Director
About the Survey
The survey was conducted by Ipsos between March 20th and March 23rd, 2017, on behalf of the Canadian Constitution Foundation. For this survey, a sample of 1,003 Canadians from Ipsos' online panel was interviewed online. Weighting was then employed to balance demographics to ensure that the sample's composition reflects that of the adult population according to Census data and to provide results intended to approximate the sample universe. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within +/ - 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadian adults been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.
|
|
|
|
