Charter Of Rights And Freedoms Essay

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The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came to be in April of 1982. Its purpose is to protect the people’s rights and freedoms by limiting the government’s authority over which laws to pass, by identifying whether they could violate those rights and freedoms. The laws that are passed must be in harmony with the Charter. Its sections are left up to the courts to interpret it as they deem fit to individual cases. According to the Charter, everyone is to be “treated equally regardless of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age, or mental or physical disability”. Some of the sections in the Constitution, of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms are our equality rights, mobility rights, and legal rights. Section 11 …show more content…

v. Collins, the courts dealt with a delay caused by the Crown. There was a two-year delay, where the Crown had delayed disclosing its case to the defence. The accused had asked for an earlier trial date, but had spent almost two years in custody awaiting trial. In addition, as seen in R. v. Kporwodu, two individuals, Anthony Kporwodu and Angela Veno were accused of killing their three-month-old daughter, and were charged with first-degree murder. The two had another child, a son, who was also taken into custody and placed in foster case. The defendants suffered from high levels of stress and depression because of this. Angela Veno later became pregnant, and was told by her social worker that if she chose to have the baby, “it would likely be taken away as well unless the police cleared her and her husband of wrongdoing in the case”. Ms. Veno chose to have an abortion, and thus, suffered from intense depression, anger, frustration, and loss, despite received therapeutic counseling. The case was delayed for 70 months, in which the defendants were denied the right to be presumed innocent until proven otherwise. The judge stayed the case and the court later found that there was prejudice to the defendants as well as a violation of Sections 7 and 11(b) of the Charter of Rights and

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