David Clinton
Is Canada Abusing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms?

Canadians have no absolute right to equal treatment under the law.
Monitoring the intersection between equality and equity
Let me explain that. Section 15 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms was, from the perspective of the Charter’s creators, an exceedingly difficult needle to thread. The tension between its two subsections carries the potential for confusion and even abuse. Here’s the text itself:
(1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
(2) Section (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
15(1) guaranteed the equal treatment of all individuals. That’s something I can’t imagine any reasonable-minded person opposing. The problem was that, at the same time, the authors also wanted to leave room for unfair treatment for select groups through affirmative action programs. That’s the purpose of 15(2).
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If 15(2) didn’t exist, challenges to, say, hiring practices targeting historically disadvantaged racial groups could be launched based on the rights found in 15(1). Imagine people who didn’t technically qualify as disadvantaged but who might be better suited for and in greater immediate need of an advertised job. If the “affirmative action” candidate was nevertheless hired, couldn’t the others argue that they’d just suffered Charter-level discrimination? 15(2) is designed to ensure such challenges don’t happen.
Such state-imposed inequality may or may not be justifiable. That’s a debate that doesn’t interest me right now. Instead, my primary focus is on how the principle could be widely abused.
I should clarify that these rules only apply to government programs and agencies. While private companies might be bound by other areas of related law, the Charter was only written for government operations. But it’s nevertheless worth remembering that 4.4 million Canadians work for one level or another of government (when you include hospitals and public schools). That’s around 21 percent of all Canadian workers. And many more of us interact with governments regularly.
What kinds of abuse are possible? Well, consider how so many equality-related decisions are highly subjective and rely on the good faith and clarity of mind of the policy makers and public officials in positions of power. In that context:
- How can we know that factors like “ameliorative”, “disproportionate”, or “disadvantaged” are accurately and appropriately defined?
- How can we know that favoring one group won’t cause deep and irreparable harm to others?
- How can we know that even good-faith decisions aren’t made based on outdated assumptions or inaccurate stereotypes?
Easy-to-imagine practical examples of abuse could include:
- Provincial scholarship programs that target low-income students from only certain ethnic groups while excluding members of other groups who might currently experience even greater financial hardship.
- Seats in highly competitive university programs that are restricted to only candidates expressing specified identities without objective evidence that such individuals are currently meaningfully underrepresented in those programs or professional fields.
- Government-funded employment programs that subtly target communities likely to share particular political beliefs.
- Internal career advancement policies that prioritize identity and ethnicity over competence that lead to reduced organizational capacity.
- Social disruption due to arbitrary official favoritism for some ethnicities and identities over others.
Of course, misuse of 15(2) can always be tested in court. Programs are, after all, expected to pass the Oakes Test (for objectives that are pressing and substantial) and the Kapp Test (for goals that are truly ameliorative and appropriately targeted).
But that requires someone who notices the problem and has the considerable means necessary to launch a court challenge. There aren’t many people like that running around.
A government that felt that misuse of the law was causing significant damage to society could choose to by-pass 15(2) altogether by invoking the Notwithstanding Clause or by amending the constitution itself. But…well, good luck surviving either attempt.
More realistically, the government could write new legislation that guides the interpretation or application of 15(2). That could mean carefully defining what constitutes an “ameliorative program” or setting clear eligibility criteria for such programs. There would be no need to change the constitution, simply to properly define it.
Alternatively, governments could govern by example. This might mean tailoring their own policies and programs to reflect a more constrained interpretation of 15(2). They could actively participate in court cases to advocate for particular interpretations and present compelling arguments to influence how courts understand and apply the provision.
Finally, of course, they could appoint judges to the Supreme Court and federal courts who are more aligned with values associated with absolute equality under the law.
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Business
Is Government Inflation Reporting Accurate?

David Clinton
Who ya gonna believe: official CPI figures or your lyin’ eyes?
Great news! We’ve brought inflation back under control and stuff is now only costing you 2.4 percent more than it did last year!
That’s more or less the message we’ve been hearing from governments over the past couple of years. And in fact, the official Statistics Canada consumer price index (CPI) numbers do show us that the “all-items” index in 2024 was only 2.4 percent higher than in 2023. Fantastic.
So why doesn’t it feel fantastic?
Well statistics are funny that way. When you’ve got lots of numbers, there are all kinds of ways to dress ‘em up before presenting them as an index (or chart). And there really is no one combination of adjustments and corrections that’s definitively “right”. So I’m sure Statistics Canada isn’t trying to misrepresent things.
But I’m also curious to test whether the CPI is truly representative of Canadians’ real financial experiences. My first attempt to create my own alternative “consumer price index”, involved Statistics Canada’s “Detailed household final consumption expenditure”. That table contains actual dollar figures for nation-wide spending on a wide range of consumer items. To represent the costs Canadian’s face when shopping for basics, I selected these nine categories:
- Food and non-alcoholic beverages
- Clothing and footwear
- Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels
- Major household appliances
- Pharmaceutical products and other medical products (except cannabis)
- Transport
- Communications
- University education
- Property insurance
I then took the fourth quarter (Q4) numbers for each of those categories for all the years between 2013 and 2024 and divided them by the total population of the country for each year. That gave me an accurate picture of per capita spending on core cost-of-living items.
Overall, living and breathing through Q4 2013 would have cost the average Canadian $4,356.38 (or $17,425.52 for a full year). Spending for those same categories in Q4 2024, however, cost us $6,266.48 – a 43.85 percent increase.
By contrast, the official CPI over those years rose only 31.03 percent. That’s quite the difference. Here’s how the year-over-year changes in CPI inflation vs actual spending inflation compare:
As you can see, with the exception of 2020 (when COVID left us with nothing to buy), the official inflation number was consistently and significantly lower than actual spending. And, in the case of 2021, it was more than double.
Since 2023, the items with the largest price growth were university education (57.46 percent), major household appliances (52.67 percent), and housing, water, electricity, gas, and other fuels (50.79).
Having said all that, you could justifiably argue that the true cost of living hasn’t really gone up that much, but that at least part of the increase in spending is due to a growing taste for luxury items and high volume consumption. I can’t put a precise number on that influence, but I suspect it’s not trivial.
Since data on spending doesn’t seem to be the best measure of inflation, perhaps I could build my own basket of costs and compare those numbers to the official CPI. To do that, I collected average monthly costs for gasoline, home rentals, a selection of 14 core grocery items, and taxes paid by the average Canadian homeowner.¹ I calculated the tax burden (federal, provincial, property, and consumption) using the average of the estimates of two AI models.
How did the inflation represented by my custom basket compare with the official CPI? Well between 2017 and 2024, the Statistics Canada’s CPI grew by 23.39 percent. Over that same time, the monthly cost of my basket grew from $4,514.74 to $5,665.18; a difference of 25.48 percent. That’s not nearly as dramatic a difference as we saw when we measured spending, but it’s not negligible either.
The very fact that the government makes all this data freely available to us is evidence that they’re not out to hide the truth. But it can’t hurt to keep an active and independent eye on them, too.
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2025 Federal Election
Highly touted policies the Liberal government didn’t actually implement

From The Audit
State capacity is the measure of a government’s ability to get stuff done that benefits its population. There are many ways to quantify state capacity, including GDP per capita spent on health, education, and infrastructure versus outcomes; the tax-to-GDP ratio; judicial independence; enforcement of contracts; and crime rates.
But a government’s ability to actually implement its own policies has got to rank pretty high here, too. All the best intentions are worthless if, as I wrote in the context of the Liberal’s 2023 national action plan to end gender-based violence, your legislation just won’t work in the real world.
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So I thought I’d take a look at some examples of federal legislation from the past ten years that passed through Parliament but, for one reason or another, failed to do its job. We may agree or disagree with goals driving the various initiatives, but government’s failure to get the work done over and over again speaks to a striking lack of state capacity.
The 2018 Cannabis Act (Bill C-45). C-45 legalized recreational cannabis in Canada, with a larger goal of regulating production, distribution, and consumption while reducing illegal markets and protecting public health. However, research has shown that illegal sales persisted post-legalization due to high legal prices and taxation. Studies have also shown continued use among children despite regulations. And there are troubling indicators about the overall impact on public health.
The 2021 Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act (Bill C-12). The legislation aimed to ensure Canada achieves net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 by setting five-year targets and requiring emissions reduction plans. However, critics argue it lacks enforceable mechanisms to guarantee results. A much-delayed progress report highlighted a lack of action and actual emissions reductions lagging far behind projections.
The First Nations Clean Water Act (Bill C-61) was introduced in late 2024 but, as of the recent dissolution of Parliament, not yet passed. This should be seen in the context of the Safe Drinking Water for First Nations Act (2013), which was repealed in 2021 after failing to deliver promised improvements in water quality due to inadequate funding and enforcement. The new bill aimed to address these shortcomings, but a decade and a half of inaction speaks to a special level of public impotence.
The 2019 Impact Assessment Act (Bill C-69). Passed in 2019, this legislation reformed environmental assessment processes for major projects. Many argue it failed to achieve its dual goals of streamlining approvals while enhancing environmental protection. Industry groups claim it created regulatory uncertainty (to put it mildly), while environmental groups argue it hasn’t adequately protected ecosystems. No one seems happy with this one.
The 2019 Firearms Act (Bill C-71). Parts of this firearms legislation were delayed in implementation, particularly the point-of-sale record keeping requirements for non-restricted firearms. Some provisions weren’t fully implemented until years after passage.
The 2013 First Nations Financial Transparency Act. – This legislation, while technically implemented, was not fully enforced after 2015 when the Liberal government stopped penalizing First Nations that didn’t comply with its financial disclosure requirements.
The 2019 National Housing Strategy Act. From the historical perspective of six years of hindsight, the law has manifestly failed to meaningfully address Canada’s housing affordability crisis. Housing prices and homelessness have continued their rise in major urban centers.
The 2019 Indigenous Languages Act (Bill C-91). Many Indigenous advocates have argued the funding and mechanisms have been insufficient to achieve its goal of revitalizing endangered Indigenous languages.
The 2007 Public Servants Disclosure Protection Act (PSDPA). Designed to protect whistleblowers within the federal public service, the PSDPA has been criticized for its ineffectiveness. During its first three years, the Office of the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner (OPSIC) astonishingly reported no findings of wrongdoing or reprisal, despite numerous submissions. A 2017 review by the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates recommended significant reforms, but there’s been no visible progress.
There were, of course, many bills from the past ten years that were fully implemented.¹ But the failure rate is high enough that I’d argue it should be taken into account when measuring our state capacity.
Still, as a friend once noted, there’s a silver lining to all this: the one thing more frightening than an inefficient and ineffective government is an efficient and effective government. So there’s that.
The fact that we’re still living through the tail end of a massive bout of inflation provides clear testimony that Bill C-13 (COVID-19 Emergency Response Act) had an impact.
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