Rights, federalism, and the reach of the state.
Section 15 guarantees substantive equality; it is infringed by a law that creates a distinction on a protected ground and imposes a disadvantage.
A Charter right can be limited if the government shows the limit is a reasonable one, justified under section 1 through the Oakes test.
Delay above a presumptive ceiling — 18 months in provincial court, 30 months in superior court — is presumptively an unreasonable delay under section 11(b).
The Court reset the framework for the right to be tried within a reasonable time under section 11(b), setting presumptive ceilings — 18 months for cases in provincial court and 30 months for cases in superior court — beyond which delay is presumptively unreasonable.
Asked whether Quebec could secede unilaterally, the Court held it could not, but that a clear majority on a clear question would create a constitutional duty to negotiate. It identified four underlying constitutional principles: federalism, democracy, constitutionalism and the rule of law, and the protection of minorities.
The Court held that omitting sexual orientation from Alberta's human rights legislation violated section 15, and read the ground into the statute as the remedy.
The first section 15 case, it held that equality is substantive rather than formal: the guarantee targets discrimination — distinctions that burden individuals on the basis of personal characteristics — and does not reach every legislative distinction. It rejected a 'similarly situated' test.
The Court struck down the Criminal Code's abortion provisions, holding that the requirement to obtain approval from a therapeutic abortion committee violated a woman's right to security of the person under section 7 in a manner not in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.
The Court set out the test for when a limit on a Charter right can be justified under section 1: the objective must be pressing and substantial, and the means proportionate — rationally connected to the objective, minimally impairing of the right, and proportionate in their overall effect.
The Court struck down the Lord's Day Act as an infringement of freedom of religion under section 2(a). A law's constitutionality turns on both its purpose and its effects, and Charter rights are defined by the interests they protect.
Interpreting section 8 of the Charter, the Court held that a search is unreasonable unless authorised in advance by a neutral arbiter on reasonable and probable grounds. It framed the interest section 8 protects as a person's reasonable expectation of privacy.
The Premier of Quebec was held personally liable for directing the cancellation of a restaurant owner's liquor licence to punish him for posting bail for fellow Jehovah's Witnesses. No public official has unfettered discretion — a power granted for one purpose may not be used for an unrelated one. An early articulation of the rule of law in Canadian public law.