Canadians Support Judicial Elections

A new poll by Strategic Counsel for CTV News and The Globe and Mail reveals that 63 per cent of Canadians support the election of judges.

The survey comes as Canada celebrates the 25th anniversary of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

There was a significant difference between Quebec and other regions of Canada when it comes to how respondents feel about Charter protection for freedom of religion.

56 per cent of the Quebec respondents feel that freedom of religion can lead to abuses by groups seeking to promote values incompatible with majority values. In the rest of the country, people feeling that way were 29 per cent.

Earlier Library Boy posts about the anniversary of the Charter include:

• Library and Archives Canada Exhibit for 25th Anniversary of the Charter (November 7, 2006): "Library and Archives Canada has put together an online exhibition Building a Just Society: A Retrospective of Canadian Rights and Freedoms for which it has 'invited a number of individual Canadians to contribute their personal thoughts and thought-provoking commentary on this vital section of our Constitution'."
• Conference on 25th Anniversary of the Charter of Rights (January 2, 2007): "The McGill Institute for the Study of Canada is hosting a conference from February 14 to 16 entitled The Charter @ 25. 'Our goal is to assemble a broad cross-section of people who can offer unique insights into the changes that have been effected by the Charter and offer a glimpse into the future. The Institute’s approach is unique such that the conference is not designed as a mere celebration of the anniversary of the Charter but rather as a ‘cerebration’, a reflection on the past, an analysis of the present and an anticipation of future developments'."
• Survey on Canadian Attitudes Regarding Charter of Rights (February 8, 2007): "In conjunction with the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada's conference marking the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy (IRPP) asked polling firm SES Research to do a detailed survey of the attitudes of Canadians towards the Charter. Among the more interesting findings: 'Much has been made of equating Charter values to Canadian values, but we found that the Charter is by no means central to Canadian identity (...) (F)ewer than 6 Canadians out of 10 gave the Charter a thumbs-up, while 4 out of 10 gave it a thumbs-down or couldn’t be sure'."
• Charter 25th Anniversary Conferences (February 21, 2007): "As I have already mentioned, McGill University organized a conference last week on the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Osgoode Hall Law School site The Court has listed some of the media coverage for the conference (...) There are other conferences this year to mark the 25th anniversary of the Charter (the post lists them)"
• Articles on 25th Anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (April 6, 2007): "There are a number of articles in the most recent issue of Canadian Lawyer about the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: Conservative columnist Ezra Levant launches an attack on what he considers the negative consequence of the constitutional document: the rise of an unelected and unaccountable 'jurocracy' (...) Jim Middlemiss, in an article entitled 'Charter Angst', writes that we've seen nothing yet (...) Jennifer McPhee writes about how the Charter has changed employment and labour law in 'The Charter and the workplace' and outlines the areas to watch in upcoming years: mandatory retirement, labour relations in aboriginal government, and privacy in the workplace. "