Commentary
It is now 40 years since the glorious Charter of Rights and Freedoms sprang full-fledged from the brow of philosopher-king Pierre Elliot Trudeau, created Canada from some rather nasty foam bobbing about from sea to shining C-minus, and gave us sweet-smelling liberty where all had been sick-making darkness. Or so I gather from the retrospectives, though I’m having a bit of trouble reconciling that particular golden bough with the sour, wormy fruit before me.
A person called the Governor General just tootled at me, “On April 17, 1982, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II proclaimed the Constitution Act, 1982… For the first time in our country’s history, our rights and freedoms were enshrined in our constitution.” So that whole Magna Carta/Glorious Revolution business was just a load of old fish heads, and when Canada’s Founders spoke proudly about preserving liberty they were thinking of something else.
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