Legal manoeuvres in the Supreme Court of Canada may soon land the country in another constitutional crisis. Earlier this week, the Carney government, through Attorney General Sean Fraser, filed an intervention in the upcoming appeal on Quebec’s secularism legislation (Bill 21) at the Supreme Court.

Crucially, however, the federal government is not contesting the secularism law itself. Instead, it is urging the judges to impose novel restrictions on the use of the notwithstanding clause, which permits legislatures to shield laws from judicial review for a renewable period of five years. This legal argument, if accepted, would undo a key component of Canada’s constitutional settlement and further subordinate parliamentary government to adventurous exercises of judicial power.

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