CHAPTER THREE: How effectively does Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms protect your individual rights?

KEY TERMS: You will need to develop a working understanding of the following vocabulary:

BACKGROUND:

Since signing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the Canadian government has attempted to make universal human rights a part of Canadian law. There are currently four key mechanisms in Canada to protect human rights: the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Canadian Human Rights Act, the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and provincial human rights laws and legislation.

The issue of human rights in Canada has not attracted significant controversy relative to human rights issues in other countries. Most Canadians believe the country to be a strong proponent and positive model of human rights for the rest of the world. For example, in 2005, Canada became the fourth country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide with the enactment of the Civil Marriage Act.

Canada does have to deal with some issues of human rights abuses that have attracted condemnation from international bodies, such as the United Nations. For example, some provinces still allow the use of religiously segregated schools. The treatment of Canada's First Nations people or Aboriginal Canadians and the disabled also continues to attract criticism.

Controversial human rights issues in Canada have included patient rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, parents' rights, children's rights, abortion rights vs rights of the unborn, minority rights, majority rights, rights of the disabled, aboriginal rights, tenant rights and economic, social and political rights. (www.wikipedia.org)

rights, freedoms, Charter of Rights and Freedoms, constitution,fundamental freedoms, democratic rights, mobility rights, legal rights, equality

rights, internment, labour unions,

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TASK ONE:

Using the “CANADIAN CHARTER OF RIGHTS & FREEDOMS” on page 92 of your text, or the copy provided to you by your teacher, we are going to play “eye spy”. I will ask a question… you will have to find the answer in the wee print on the page to find the answer! Okay, let’s play! Want a practice question?

Practice:

Q: What is the first word written in small print?

A: Whereas

READY?

1. Eye Spy… the name of the person who signed the Charter?

2. Eye Spy a section about travel… If you want to go shopping in Great Falls, Montana or Paris France… you have the right to. Which section of the Charter did you access? Prove it through text in that section?

3. Eye Spy.. the section that is MOST applicable to someone your age? Read part 3 of this section

4. Eye Spy… the first line of the Legal Rights section?

5. Eye Spy… how many people are pictured on the Charter?

6. Eye spy… the maximum # of years a House of Commons or Legislative Assembly can go before they have to call an election… look in the Democratic Rights section…

7. Under what circumstances can a House of Commons sit for longer than 5 years?

8. Eye spy… 3 recognizable symbols of Canada on the Charter?

9. What date was this Charter of Rights and Freedoms brought into Canadian law?

10. Eye Spy… a legal right that pertains to someone who is deaf!

11. Eye Spy… a reference to a province that is officially bilingual

12. Eye Spy.. a section of the Equality Rights that says you can not disadvantage someone because of…

13. Eye Spy… a section that says you have the freedom of religion, thought and opinion, freedom of press and media, freedom peaceful assembly, and freedom of association.

14. Eye Spy… the word… “detention”! What Right, Section number, and letter is it under?

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TASK TWO: Your Individual Rights Under the Charter

Select Rights & Freedoms from each category; then rank the choices you made (1 being most important to you and 10 being least important to you – be prepared to explain your rankings)

Fundamental Freedoms:

Democratic Rights:

Mobility Rights:

Legal Rights:

Equality Rights:

Women’s Rights

When did women begin to campaign for the right to vote in Canada? ___________

In what year could women vote in a federal election? ___________

What attitudes does the Charter reflect towards women today?

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Internment Camps

Who was included in the internment camps, when did they occur, and why were they interned? For each case study (picture), briefly explain what happened and why?

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In 1942 the Canadian government moved to relocate all Japanese in British Columbia, seizing any property that the people could not carry (courtesy Erindale College Photo Collection)

Police banging on doors at all hours of the day or night, ordering frightened occupants to gather up only what they could carry. Parents and children innocent of any crime ushered from their homes, herded in a central depot and freighted out by train to remote camps. A scene from Nazi Germany? No, it was the internment of the Japanese in British Columbia, 1942. The Japanese had suffered the sting of racism ever since the first Japanese, a sailor named Manzo Nagano, stepped ashore in 1877 at New Westminster.

The early BC settlers were highly conscious of their British origins and, deeply concerned over the racial origins of the new immigrants, became obsessed with excluding “undesirables.” Laws were passed to keep the Japanese from working in the mines, to prevent them from voting and to prohibit them from working on any project funded by the province. Then came the stunning news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941. On December 25 the Japanese forced the surrender of the British garrison at Hong Kong, including two battalions of Canadians. With these shocking events, the fears of a Japanese invasion, fanned by sensationalist press, spread along the Pacific Coast. The RCMP arrested suspected Japanese operatives, impounded 1200 fishing boats and shut down Japanese newspapers and schools. “From the army point of view, I cannot see that Japanese Canadians constitute the slightest menace to national security” declared Major General Ken Stuart. Nevertheless, BC politicians were in a constant rage, speaking of the Japanese, as Canadian diplomat Escott Reid said, “in the way that the Nazis would have spoken about Jewish Germans. When they spoke I felt in that room the physical presence of evil.” On February 24, 1942 Prime Minister King issued a series of orders in council to evacuate all persons of Japanese origin to “protective areas.” All property that could not be carried would be taken “into custody.” Ten days later, the British Columbia Security Commission removed the first 2500 Japanese to Hastings Park. “It was terrible, unbelievable” one woman remembered, “They kept us in the stalls where they put the cattle and horses.”

Special trains carried the Japanese from Hastings Park to Slocan, New Denver, and other ghost towns in the interior of BC. The camps were in a spectacular setting but the conditions for the evacuees were primitive. They were not “concentration camps” or even surrounded with barbed wire as were the camps in the US, but conditions were primitive and crowded at first, with no electricity or running water.On January 19, 1943, in a further betrayal, an order in council liquidated all the Japanese property which had been under “protective custody.”

Some Japanese might have cherished the idea that racism was confined to BC but they found that it was spread across Canada. Though acutely in need of labour, Albertans did not want the Japanese in their midst. Alberta farmers crowded the laborers into tiny shacks, and cheated them of their wages. For the Japanese, sugar beet labour was “hell on earth.”

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Even those Japanese who were Canadian citizens were relocated in 1942 (courtesy Library and Archives Canada/C-46350).

Some 20,881 were uprooted, of whom 13,309 were Canadian citizens by birth. Most of the older nationals had lived in Canada for 25-40 years.

The Japanese did not resist the internment. Their culture emphasized duty and obligations as part of gaman (forebearance). As Kaoru Ikeda wrote: “Shikata-ga-nai. You say it fast. It means ‘It can’t be helped.’ That’s why most of us didn’t put up a fuss. It is part of our upbringing.” Even at the end of the war King continued to bow to the most strident demands. He offered the Japanese two choices: go back to Japan or disperse “east of the Rockies.” Unlike his counterparts in the United States, he never expressed any regrets and even declared that he had dealt with the problem “with loving mercy.” On May 2, 1947, SS Marine Angel slipped its moorings in Vancouver carrying a vanguard of 3964 who sailed for war-devastated Japan. With these deportations, the Japanese finally gained some friends among Canadians. Still, the last controls on the Japanese were not lifted until March 31, 1949, when the Japanese were free to vote. Finally Canadian society began to open to the Japanese. The military threat cited to justify the evacuation of the Japanese never existed outside the overheated imaginations of some British Columbians. Still, many people are uncomfortable with the current enthusiasm for judging the acts of our predecessors from the exalted perspective of hindsight. When the Japanese campaigned for compensation, Pierre Trudeau asked, where would compensation end? History leaves many victims. “An injustice once performed is fatally easy to repeat,” wrote B.K. Sandwell of Saturday Night. The most enduring accomplishments of the Japanese campaign for recompense were the abolition of the War Measures Act, which had provided the legal basis for the removal of the Japanese from their homes, and the reminder of the poisonous effects of racism in any society. James H. Marsh is editor in chief of The Canadian Encyclopedia.

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The Ukrainian Canadian internment was part of the confinement of "enemy aliens" in Canada during and for 2 years after the end of World War I, lasting from 1914 to 1920. About 5,000 Ukrainian men of Austro-Hungarian citizenship were kept in twenty-four internment camps and related work sites, also known, at the time, as concentration camps. Another 80,000 were registered as "enemy aliens" and obliged to regularly report to the police. Those interned had whatever little wealth they owned confiscated.Under the 1914 War Measures Act, "aliens of enemy nationality" were compelled to register with authorities. About 70,000 Ukrainians from Austro-Hungary fell under this description. 8,579 males were interned by the Canadian Government, including 5,954 Austro-Hungarians, most of whom were probably ethnic Ukrainians. Most of the interned were poor or unemployed single men, although 81 women and 156 children (mainly Germans in Vernon and Ukrainians at Spirit Lake) had no choice but to accompany their menfolk to two of the camps, in Spirit Lake, near Amos, Quebec, and Vernon, British Columbia. Some of the internees were Canadian-born and others were naturalized British subjects, although most were recent immigrants. Citizens of the Tsarist Russian Empire were not interned and so could enlist in the Canadian Expeditionary Force. One of them, Filip Konowal, would win the Victora Cross for his valour during the Battle of Hill 70, just beyond Vimy Ridge, in August 1917. The last known survivor of the internment is Mary Manko, a child when she was interned with her family at Spirit Lake (see photograph above).Many of these internees were used for forced labour in internment camps. Conditions at the camps varied, and the Banff/Castle Mountain camp, where labour contributed to the creation of Banff National Park, was considered exceptionally harsh and abusive. The internment continued for two more years after the war had ended, although most Ukrainians were paroled into jobs for private companies by 1917. Even as parolees, they were still required to report regularly to the police authorities. Federal and provincial governments and private concerns benefitted from the internee's labour and from the confiscation of what little wealth they had, a portion of which was left in the Bank of Canada at the end of the internment operations, 20 June 1920. A small number of internees, including men considered to be "dangerous foreigners," labour radicals, or particularly troublesome internees, were deported to Europe after the war, largely from the Kapuskasing camp, which was the last to be shut down.Of those interned 109 died of various diseases and injuries sustained in the camp, six were killed while trying to escape, and some, according to Sir William Dillon Otter's final report, went insane or committed suicide as a result of their confinement.Currently there are twenty plaques and memorials across Canada commemorating the internment, including two at the locations of former concentration camps in Banff National Park. These have been placed by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and its supporters. On November 25, 2005, Conservative MP Inky Mark's Private Member's Bill C- 331, Internment of Persons of Ukrainian Origin Recognition Act, received Royal Assent. This act acknowledges that persons of Ukrainian origin were interned in Canada during the First World War and it legally obliges the Government of Canada to negotiate "an agreement concerning measures that may be taken to recognize the internment" for educational and commemorative projects. Nothing, however, has been done to meet this legal obligation so the Ukrainian Canadian community's representatives are continuing to call for Ottawa to negotiate a timely and honourable redress and reconciliation settlement.

Ukrainian internees at the Spirit Lake Internment Camp,SOURCES:

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com,

http://en.wikipedia.org/

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CHAPTER FOUR: To what extent has Canada affirmed collective rights?

KEY TERMS: You will need to develop a working understanding of the following vocabulary:

TASK ONE:

Answer the following questions:

1) What is the difference between an individual and collective rights? Provide examples.

affirm, collective identity, collective rights, Indian Act, First Nations, Indian, aboriginal peoples, indigenous peoples, reserves, annuity, sovereignty, Numbered Treaties, treaty,

assimilate, ethnocentrism, Francophone, Anglophone, official language, publicly funded, Metis, scrip, inherent right, autonomy, entrenching, patriate, official language

minority

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TASK TWO:

Re-create the mind map found on page 122.

TASK THREE:

Identify the numbered treaties on the map below.

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TASK FOUR: Inquiry challenge

Use the internet (or other resources) to help you answer the following questions:

1) Treaty 7 is the treaty that encompasses our immediate geographic area.What First Nations groups are included in Treaty 7?

TASK FIVE:

Using what you can find in the textbook chapter 3, including the information on page 137, create a mind map to explain the important elements of the Indian Act.

TREATY 7

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TASK SIX:

Watch the following clip. Briefly explain the perspective being presented. What evidence does the person use to support their perspective?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaubXDSgAxg

TASK SEVEN:

Explain the following terms:

Anglophone:

Francophone:

Official language minority:

TASK EIGHT:

Answer the following questions:

1) Describe the two sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that deal with official language rights.

SECTIONS ____ to ____:

SECTION _____:

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2) Use the information on page 150 to explain the cartoon.

TASK NINE:

Explain the following terms:

Métis:

Inherent rights:

Scrip:

TASK TEN:

Use the story of Louis Riel to explain collective rights in Canada. Was he a hero or a villain in Canadian history? (watch CBC segment)

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Louis Riel is considered one of the most important figures in Canadian history. Many people view Louis Riel as the biggest pioneer of Metis in Canadian history. If you think Louis Riel was a Hero. You need to assess his accomplishments and what they did for the Metis history. In this life time Riel was named the Secretary for the National Committee of the Red River Metis and people came to him for advice instead of the president. Riel was well aware of about McDougall’s approach to the boundary at Pembina. Riel and armed Metis marched through the open gate at Fort Garry and took power of the ambulant storage of food and the fortress itself. Riel also claimed other fortresses for the Metis and eventually the president of the National Committee of the Red River Metis resigned and gave the position of president to Louis Riel. These are some of the many reasons that society today sees Louis Riel as a hero in Canadian history and they admire him.

If you think of Louis Riel was a Villain. You must look at all the crooked things he did while he was alive. He tried to lead Native Americans and Metis in the Red River settlements in Manitoba to rebel. Although the land was transferred from the Hudson Bay company to the Canadian Government, and the rebellion collapsed. He led rebels attempting to secure land titles in Saskatchewan at the engagement at Batoche Riel was eventually captured, tried, and hung. During his trial he gave two speeches thinking he could persuade the jury to take his side. He plead insanity at his trial thinking that no matter what he did; if it turned out benefiting him in the long run, he could get away with anything he wanted. In the end, he was wrong. The courts had no symphony for him and he was found guilty of treason and was hung. If you were a Metis then you would have entire different views on him. The Metis think of him as a God. Riel led them to many rebellions and the Metis seized many fortresses under his command. Riel ran away when the rebellion collapsed and while he was gone he was given the title “outlaw”. Although while he was gone the government set aside a piece of land for the Metis, thus established the province Manitoba. Other Metis may view Louis Riel as a traitor because they are very proud of their heritage and being represented by a person who betrayed them is something that they would not want to admit to. No matter what your race. Society today and the Metis all have different views on this man named Louis Riel In conclusion there are many different views on what Louis Riel was. He believed he was a full-blooded Metis. He didn’t really show it in his actions. Calling him a hero would be correct because he did take over numerous fortresses as well as work his way up to become the president of the National Committee of the Red River Metis. Calling him a villain would also be correct as well. He betrayed his country when his rebellion failed and he was an outlaw until he returned to Canada and tried to start another rebellion when he was captured and taken to trial for treason and sentenced to death.

Before he died he said, “When I die, Metis dies with me.” He is saying that if he has to go then the whole Metis must go with him. This was a cocky move and it lacked moral. Louis Riel died in 1885 and according to him, the Metis died with him, or did it? Source: cbc.ca

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