Everyday, millions of Canadians go to work or leave the country, yet that could not have been done if there was not a section in the charter for mobility rights.
You see, mobility rights is a huge part of lives for Canadians. No matter what race you are or your identity the charter gives you the rights to move wherever you want in Canada and it gives you the right to remain in or leave Canada at the person’s discretion, but there are a lot of problems surrounding mobility rights.The Canadian government introduced a No-fly blacklist that was meant to block people from flying with suspicion of terrorism or people with serious criminal charges. This no-fly list was to help prevent terrorist attacks after the incident on September 11, 2001 where some dangerous terrorists were let on a plane and hijacked it to crash into the World Trade Towers. Ever since that No-fly list was created, about as much as 100,000 innocent canadians with a name similar as a suspected criminals are forced to wait a very long time at a security checkpoints at airports or at border crossings, until they are checked over and allowed to pass. Many people are very embarrassed at this but the government of Canada has done almost nothing at this other than asking people to change their name.
A more recent case was about a terrorist group, the Tamil Tigers and two criminals. In 2012, there was a case surrounding two people, Suresh Sriskandarajah and Piratheepan Nadarajah, that they had helped the terrorist group Tamil Tigers stationed in Sri Lanka. Neither of them were prosecuted in Canada, because the United States wanted to prosecute them. The duo tried to challenge the supreme court that their mobility rights were being violated and that the Charter clearly stated in section 6 that they had the right to remain in Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada rejected the challenge so then Suresh Sriskandarajah and Piratheepan Nadarajah were extradited to the United States of America. This just shows that Canada has no laws regarding extradition to foreign nations. In the year 1989, there was a case regarding Black.
V. Law society of Alberta. The law society had developed a policy where you could not be a lawyer with multiple lawyer firms despite their policy directly violated Canada’s mobility rights. Some members of the firm lived in Toronto and some lived in Calgary, where this law firm was based. The law society saw this happening so they enacted two policies where you couldn’t be a member of multiple firms or live outside of Alberta. Where the policies were put in effect the members of the law society was challenged for violating the members mobility rights.
The court found that the policies violated the charter and mobility rights since the charter states that canadian citizens can move about where ever they want in Canada. While provinces can regulate this, they can not do so in terms of provincial boundaries. Section 6 states that a person can make a living in a province that they don’t even live in. This was where the Law Society made its mistake.
The defendants won the case. In conclusion, no matter what race or identity you are, the charter gives you the rights to move about wherever you want in Canada and it gives you the right to remain in or leave the country at your choice. As a canadian citizen since we are a free country, I do not think canadians should be subject to the no fly list which I’m pretty sure violates the charter for rights and freedoms orbe extradited to another for a trial and for criminal charges, which I feel like doesn’t make sense. This is not making Canada have a good quality of life for select individuals. Let’s change how Canada deals with extradition or the no fly list.
