Over the last little while, I’ve been doing my best to let people know that municipal law enforcement can walk onto your private property without giving you notice, and without a warrant. I think these sorts of no-notice, no-warrant power of entry provisions are an outrage. More people should be aware of it, and more [...]
Category Archives: Charter
Reason # 305 for why we need property rights in the Charter
Posted by Peter Jaworski on June 19, 2012 Comments Off
“I am of the opinion that the properties proposed for expropriation are absolutely essential for the safety and security of Canada,” reads the final decision from Ottawa, signed by Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose. “For that reason and in absence of valid justification to do otherwise, I have confirmed my intention to expropriate.” And with [...]
What is expression?
Posted by Mike Brock on November 21, 2011 4 comments
I have some complex and nuanced views on the Occupy Toronto protest, and I’m going to avoid getting into them here. Instead, I want to ask a question and hope in elicits a coherent response: if occupying a public park and turning it into your de facto domicile can be a Charter-protected form of political [...]
If you carry your alcohol from one province to another, you are breaking the law
Posted by Peter Jaworski on September 3, 2011 Comments Off
My latest for the Huffington Post is about the illegality of carrying alcohol between provinces. Here it is: Popular radio personality and former MuchMusic VJ Terry David Mulligan experimented with civil disobedience in May of this year. His rebellion? He carried nine bottles of wine across the B.C. and Alberta border in violation of the [...]
Turns out we do have the freedom to celebrate freedom
Posted by Peter Jaworski on August 3, 2011 1 comment
This upcoming weekend will mark the eleventh annual Liberty Summer Seminar, held on my parents’ property in the municipality of Clarington. A year ago, it looked like the Liberty Summer Seminar would be no more. It looked like it was going to be cancelled due to zoning regulations. The Liberty Summer Seminar is an event [...]
Lies the left and social conservatives told me
Posted by M.J. Sheppard on April 18, 2011 Comments Off
I don’t make a distinction between liberals and social conservatives because there truly isn’t much of one. Neither is particularly good with money and the ideological agendas of both require a massive government to implement. As they are both philosophically statist, both are antithetical to me and everything I believe. Indeed, I think that an [...]
R. v. Mernagh: Restrictions on possession and production of marijuana unconstitutional
Posted by Peter Jaworski on April 12, 2011 9 comments
While everyone was busy thinking about the leaders debate, the Ontario Superior Court reached a decision in R. v. Mernagh invalidating as unconstitutional restrictions on the possession and production of marijuana for medical purposes. There is a 90-day stay on the decision which struck down sections 4 and 7 of the Controlled Drugs and Substances [...]
Property rights in the Charter
Posted by Peter Jaworski on March 1, 2011 Comments Off
Authorson v. Canada (Attorney General), [2003] 2 S.C.R. 40, 2003 SCC 39: “…while substantive rights may stem from due process, the Bill of Rights does not protect against the expropriation of property by the passage of unambiguous legislation. Parliament has the right to expropriate property, even without compensation, if it has made its intention clear…” [...]
You should have stayed at home
Posted by Mike Brock on February 26, 2011 22 comments
CBC’s The Fifth Estate gives what is, in my estimation, one of the most balanced reports on what happened during the G20 in Toronto that I have seen in the mainstream media. And you can watch the whole thing here: ShareFacebookStumbleUponDiggRedditEmail
Putting property rights in the Charter
Posted by Peter Jaworski on February 26, 2011 1 comment
Here’s video of Thursday’s press conference to enshrine property rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: (My remarks begin at the 6:30 mark of the video). ShareFacebookStumbleUponDiggRedditEmail
Ontario Ombudsman: “Mass violation” of rights.
Posted by Mike Brock on December 7, 2010 13 comments
The Ontario Ombudsman office has concluded what people like myself have known all along, from what we saw with our own eyes, and experienced first hand. That, during the G20 summit in Toronto, police acted in a way that was not consistent with our fundamental legal rights. Rather, they outright violated them. Arbitrary arrests, arbitrary [...]
Bylaw cracks down on 91-year-old man who just wanted to build a house
Posted by Peter Jaworski on November 16, 2010 21 comments
“I thought this was a free country, that we had liberties and freedoms like we used to have, but I was sadly mistaken,” said Craig Morrison to a reporter for the Telegraph-Journal in New Brunswick. The story of Morrison, a 91-year-old man who built his own house overlooking the Bay of Fundy, is replete with [...]
Three reasons why we shouldn’t care about original intentions (and two reason why we should)
Posted by Peter Jaworski on November 14, 2010 12 comments
Terrence and I have been busy thinking about doctrines of constitutional interpretation for about the last year or two. We have a project on-the-go, which we’ll talk about soon. Recently, Maxime Bernier stood up in defence of “originalism” as a method of constitutional interpretation. But there are many kinds of “originalism,” some of them better [...]