IV. International Obligations
Imprisonment may take away a prisoner’s freedom, but it does not nullify a
prisoner’s right to equal treatment under the law, and it must never be
allowed to sever the ties that link a prisoner to the brother and sisterhood
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights accords us all.83
Canada’s international obligations are becoming increasingly important to the
interpretation of both the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and our
domestic laws. For FSW, this means that the CCRA, along with the regulations
under it, must be scrutinized in light of Canada’s significant commitments to, for
example, the elimination of discrimination against women, to fair treatment of
prisoners, and to civil and political rights. Our discussion looks first at the
increasing significance of international obligations to assessing the
constitutionality and legality of domestic law and policy. We then set out a
number of international instruments that have been identified as enshrining the
rights of prisoners, and highlight some concrete ways in which Canada is in
breach of those international obligations in its treatment of FSW.
On the importance
of Canada’s international commitments to Charter interpretation,
Chief Justice Dickson (as he then was) stated in Slaight Communications:
… Canada’s international human rights obligations should inform not only
the interpretation of the content of rights guaranteed by the Charter… the
fact that a value has the status of an international human right, either in
customary international law or under a treaty to which Canada is a State
Party, should generally be indicative of a high degree of importance
attached to that objective.84
In Reference Re: Public Service Employee Relations, Chief Justice Dickson
again underscored that:
The various sources
of international human rights law – declaration, covenants, judicial
and quasi-judicial decisions of international tribunals, customary
norms – must, in my opinion, be relevant and persuasive sources for
interpretation of Charter provisions.85
83. |
M.
Jackson, Justice Behind the Walls: Human Rights in Canadian
Prisons (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 2002) www.justicebehindthewalls.net/book. |
84. |
Slaight Communications Inc. v. Davidson, [1989] 1 S.C.R. at 1056. |
85. |
Reference
Re Public Service Employee Relations Act, [1987] 1 S.C.R.
313 at 348. These cases were positively referred to by the Supreme
Court of Canada most recently in US v. Burns, [2001]
1 S.C.R. 283. |
|