Carney's move to limit notwithstanding clause threatens national unity

When the media reported on Wednesday that the Carney government will argue at the Supreme Court of Canada that repeated uses of the notwithstanding clause may be unconstitutional, I thought there must have been some mistake.

Then I got the federal government’s factum — its written legal argument — filed in the challenge to Quebec’s secularism law, known as English Montreal School Board v. Quebec . (My organization, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, is also intervening.) It’s true. They really are picking this fight: “Repeated declarations under s. 33 (the notwithstanding clause) could amount, at a certain point, to abolishing the very right or freedom in question,” they argue. I had expected that the Carney government would be willing to risk some alienation from Quebeckers by