A number of years ago I attended an event at which Irwin Cotler,
then Federal Minister of Justice, was the featured speaker. Being a
former professor, his speech was as much a university lecture as
anything else. The focus of his engaging and entertaining
presentation was how, with the repatriation of the Constitution in
1982, and the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms, Canada moved from being a parliamentary democracy to
a constitutional democracy. One of his sub-theses was that not all
of the governments within Canada that had cottoned on to this
fact.
What Kotler meant was that with the adoption of the
Constitution Act, 1982, something that most people my age
were taught in grade school was no longer the case. Parliament
(and, within its respective jurisdiction, the provincial
legislature) was no longer supreme. All government action,
including legislation, had to be undertaken in a manner that is
consistent with the Constitution. Actions and
