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‘People are confused’: Survey suggests Canadians need education on Charter rights
(www.winnipegfreepress.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
94 points (100.0% liked)
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Well yeah, unless you're an immigrant or refugee that recently got citizenship, Canadians were likely last educated about the Charter back in grade school or high school. And never again since unless they look it up themselves.
And, what's worse, the ubiquity of US media has many Canadians confused about which legal documents are even Canadian and thus apply to them.
—WAYYYY too fucking many idiot fellow Canadianz
Edit: to clarify, we DO have the right against self-incrimination and being compelled to take the stand but we don't have Amendment rights—we have the Charter 'n shit
I can forgive Canadians for thinking they have the 5th amendment, because we still have some legal structures which are at least similar.
Canadians who think they have some specially engrained fundamental right to own firearms on the other hand... Like... What?
I still have trouble accepting either of these beliefs are commonplace among Canadians. My late-20th century education only briefly touched on the Charter but it seems common sense that stuff from US TV wouldn't apply to us.
The odd times I've had questions about various areas of law or governance, I always have to spend time looking them up. (Seems to me people in the US should still research these things though. It's not like TV/movies are accurate, complete, and up-to-date.)
I guess I don't know if I'd say my experience is that it's "commonplace", but that it's "surprisingly common".
Common sense is misnamed, though—it's among the rarest qualities for anyone to have, alas.
The amount of gun owners who think that gun ownership is a constitutional right is kinda hilarious though
Was the average Canadian educated in it even then? As far as I can recall, the Charter was barely touched on in any required material during my mandatory schooling. We spent more time on stuff like the internal timeline of the Seven Years' War than we did on any kind of civics.
Granted, that was back in the 20th century. I really hope that the subject matter covered in mandatory education has been rebalanced since then, but I'm not holding my breath for the result having been any better.
If it was covered back then, I don't remember. It's been literally a generation since I was in school. So what little I did learn has certainly been lost by now.