Subseries 9 - Charter of Rights and Freedoms

0.2 m of textual records

My active involvement with the Charter began in July 1980 (a few days after our return from England) when I attended the first meeting of the Canadian Jewish Congress’ Select Committee on the Constitution, chaired by Max Cohen and which included Harry Arthurs, David Lewis, Irwin Cotler, John I. Laskin and Marv Catzman (files 3-10). My assignment was to do a paper on Legal Rights under the Charter (file 6). We prepared a submission for the Joint Committee on the Constitution in November 1980 (file 7). The Committee kept an eye on further developments (files 8-10).

In November 1980 I took part in a joint Osgoode/U of T symposium on the proposed Charter. Again, my assignment was Legal Rights (file 11).

When the Charter was finalised, I gave a number of talks on Legal Rights to various groups, including to the Supreme Court of Ontario judges, the Ontario County Court judges, the Atlantic provinces provincial court judges, the Alberta superior court judges, and the Judges’ Day session at the CBA Annual Meeting in August 1982 (files 12-14). The ideas expressed were set out in an article in 1982 in the Criminal Law Quarterly (file 15).

My next involvement was at the annual CIAJ Conference in Winnipeg in October 1983, which was then published in the Manitoba Law Review (files 16-18). There are also papers on the Charter in other boxes, such as in the ‘Other Travel’ and ‘Other Professional Activities’ boxes. Finally, I gave a talk in 1984 to the newly appointed federal judges at Mont Ste. Marie (file 19).

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