A Saskatchewan court has ruled that freedoms granted under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms outweigh promises made in a 1947 civil rights bill passed by Premier Tommy Douglas.The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal dismissed arguments from Marjaleena Repo, a Saskatoon woman fined in 2021 for breaking pandemic restrictions on gatherings of more than 10 people. Blacklock's Reporter said Repo claimed the province’s postwar legislation guaranteed her an absolute right to free assembly.Justice Lian Schwann wrote that while the 1947 Act To Protect Certain Civil Rights was historic and never repealed, it does not override the Charter, which explicitly allows governments to put “reasonable limits” on freedoms..“Rights outlined in the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code are not absolute,” Schwann wrote. “Importantly the rights and freedoms expressed in the Charter are not absolute because section one makes them subject to reasonable limits.”The Act, passed 78 years ago, declared “every class of person shall enjoy the right to peaceable assembly.” That law inspired the 1960 Canadian Bill of Rights and Saskatchewan’s 1979 Human Rights Code, neither of which contained the Charter’s “reasonable limits” language.Schwann ruled that old statutes cannot be used to bypass Charter provisions. “The Canadian Bill of Rights, although still in force today, has taken a backseat in the realm of rights-based federal legislation following the enactment of the Charter,” she wrote.Douglas’ Cooperative Commonwealth Federation government pioneered other reforms later copied nationwide, including public auto insurance, the 44-hour work week, two weeks’ paid vacation, arts subsidies, and rebranding prisons as “correctional institutes.”
