Monday, January 31, 2005

I read here a beautiful transcript of Ann Coulter in an interview on the CBC, being busted for being an ignoramus. (The original report is from Rumor Control.)

Had an interesting discussion with a prospective Yalie (I do interviews for my alma mater) talking about the odd state of civil rights in Canada. There is a Charter of Rights in Canada, but the provinces can and do opt out if they feel like it, under the infamous "Notwithstanding Clause." The provinces themselves have charters of rights, but these, like any other law, can be changed by provincial parliament. Which means that the individual provinces can treat civil rights any way they like. If Alberta wants to suspend habeas corpus to help with the mad cow problem, it could. The only thing stopping it is, well, that wouldn't be very Canadian, would it? If Quebec wants to trample on English-speakers' language rights, it can. That wouldn't be very Canadian, either -- ohhh, right, the Parti Quebecois doesn't think they're Canadian, anyway.

So on the one hand you have the US, where rights are enshrined by law, and trampled now and then by the government, and then you have Canada, where rights are not enshrined by law, not really, and aren't trampled particularly more than they are in the States. (I can't say Canada's better because of that nasty Bill 101 in Quebec.)

At least our tv journalists are real journalists, though...

10:05 PM

1 Comments:

Where did you get your legal info. Provices do have their charters of rights and they can't opt out of the federal one!!!!

By  Anonymous, at 11:59 AM  

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