The notwithstanding mechanism and public discussion: Lessons from the ignored practice of section 33 of the Charter
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Sommaire: La plupart des Canadiens pensent que la clause dérogatoire, à savoir I'article 33 de la Charte des droits et libertés , n'a été utilisée qu'à quelques reprises par le passé et qu'à l'heure actuelle aucune loi se prévalant de l'article 33 n'est en vigueur. Le présent article révèle que la clause dérogatoire a en fait été utilisée par seize différents textes législatifs (en plus de l'usage général qui en est fait au Québec) et que sept lois se prévalant du mécanisme sont encore en vigueur. L'article soutient ensuite que les deux principales raisons pour lesquelles le public ne remarque pas le recours à l'article 33 s'expliquent par le fait que ces cas étaient à la fois invisibles et inaccessibles. Ils étaient invisibles parce qu'ils portaient sur des sujets qui n'étaient pas à l'ordre du jour public et ils étaient inaccessibles parce qu'ils traitaient de questions de politiques compliquées. L'article conclut en argumentant qu'on ne devrait recourir à la clause dérogatoire qu'en réaction à une décision de la Cour suprême et non avant une telle décision. Il est probable qu'une décision de la Cour suprême aurait rendu ces recours ignorés à l'article 33 à la fois plus visibles, plus accessibles, et de ce fait plus évidents. Abstract: Most Canadians believe that the notwithstanding clause, namely section 33 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, has been used only a few times in the past and that currently no legislations invoking section 33 is in force. This article reveals that the “notwithstanding mechanism” was actually used in sixteen different pieces of legislation (in addition to its omnibus use by Quebec) and that seven acts invoking the mechanism are still in force. The article then argues that two main reasons for the lack of public response to these invocations of section 33 were that these uses were both invisible and inaccessible. They were invisible because they dealt with matters that were not on the public agenda and they were inaccessible because they dealt with complicated policy questions. The article concludes by contending that the notwithstanding mechanism should only be used in response to a Supreme Court decision and not prior to it. It is likely that a Supreme Court decision would have made these ignored uses of section 33 both more visible and more accessible and hencc more noticeable.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.023 | 0.028 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.025 | 0.082 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.028 | 0.015 |
| Open science | 0.004 | 0.009 |
| Research integrity | 0.017 | 0.015 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.013 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".