Date of publication: 17 Apr 2022 • 3 hours ago • 4 minutes reading • 254 comments The official English version of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is displayed. Photo THE CANADIAN PRESS / stf
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A visitor to Washington can walk up to the US Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Declaration of Rights.
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These age-yellowed documents, contained in special cases and exuding sacred authority, are on display at the Rotunda for Freedom Maps at the National Archives Museum. But for Canadians, there is no such option. The 1982 Constitution Act, which contains the charter, is nowhere to be found. Even the British Law of North America, the fundamental document now called the Constitution Act of 1867, is not exposed – not even in Canada. “There is a whole range of documents, ranging from the Hudson Company Statute to the 1763 Declaration to the ‘enumerated treaties’ of the 1870s, which have never been exhibited in Canada, and that is a real pity,” said Patrice Dutil. . an associate at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, in an email. “Museums should present them creatively, sparking the kind of historical debate that people in this country crave.”
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Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of the signing of the Act of Proclamation of the Constitution, 1982. Queen Elizabeth II, then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, then-Minister of Justice Jean Chrétien, and André Ouellet, the Secretary-General, signed the document. as raindrops dripped on the page. After that, the 1982 Constitutional Law became the law of the land, consisting of the charter, a section explaining the rights of indigenous peoples, the somewhat remnant Constitution, 1867, and others, not to mention the various common laws. that help are the constitutional foundation of this country. In the intervening decades, the map has affected Canadians in a myriad of ways. helped secure rights to a fair trial, opened the door to death with medical help, allowed inmates to vote in elections, and limited the ways in which Canadians can express themselves.
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However, Canadians can not – as Americans can – go and see their basic documents. You can not make a pilgrimage to Ottawa or Winnipeg to see the newspapers that protect our rights to worship as we wish or to associate with whomever we want. Not only is the Charter or Section 35 – which deals with Indigenous rights – not exposed in Canada, but so are other respected documents, such as the British North American Act (BNA). There are several reasons for this. The first is that the 1982 Constitution Act is not an original Canadian document per se. Instead – and therefore the map – they are part of Canada Act 1982, a law passed in the United Kingdom. The originals, then, are British occupation. Even if Canadians could see the original map within the original constitution, what would it look like? What if Britain sent the original cob to the exhibition? The Ottawa PDF of the Consolidation Acts of the Constitution 1867 to 1982 has 112 pages, a parallel text in French and English, with a preamble and the old BNA Act. How would this look?
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James Muir, a legal historian at the University of Alberta, says these documents are probably not as interesting, visually speaking, unfortunately. “Until it was produced in the ’80s, it was always produced only on typewriter, right? “And it’s a typewriter on paper,” Muir said. “There is not a very large kind of artifact, a symbolic artifact…. “The map exists more often in the way we talk about it than anything else.” The government does produce a poster version of the map that can be downloaded or ordered, but it is not an original document, even if it is printed on fairly royal parchment paper. The law of BNA – which is in vellum, which is stretched calf skin – looks old and emits weight. But it is also not in Canada. In 1999, the Citizen of Ottawa visited the Victoria Tower in London to see the original document, where it was in a warehouse, next to the law on the abolition of customs duties on dogs.
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“There, in a thin, red, hard cardboard box, is a 47-page document printed on a thin veil of calfskin and tied with a wrinkled red ribbon. It measures 34 by 20 cm, slightly larger than a magazine. “After 132 years, the title page looks like a pirate map,” wrote journalist Ian MacLeod. What Canadians can see from time to time is the declaration document. It formally declares Canada’s status as an “independent state” and bears the Queen’s signature, but does not contain any of the principles set out in America’s fundamental documents. There are actually two copies. The first has been damaged by water since it was signed in the rain 40 years ago, and the second has a red ink stain on it, which was destroyed by a protester in July 1983. Both have occasionally appeared in reports. The replica of the raindrop was exhibited for six months, ending in February 2020, at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg. However, he has no permanent residence. Combined, the two documents, according to Library and Archives Canada, have appeared 18 times since 1982, for different periods of time. Throughout the pandemic, they were stored. • Email: [email protected] | Twitter: tylerrdawson
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