{"id":558305,"date":"2026-03-24T21:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T21:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/558305\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T21:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T21:26:07","slug":"quebec-government-within-its-rights-to-adopt-bill-21-lawyer-argues","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/558305\/","title":{"rendered":"Quebec government within its rights to adopt Bill 21, lawyer argues"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\" alt=\"Text to Speech Icon\" width=\"44\" height=\"44\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Listen to this article<\/p>\n<p>Estimated 2 minutes<\/p>\n<p>The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.<\/p>\n<p>Lawyers for the Quebec government argued in Supreme Court today that the province was within its rights when it adopted its secularism law, Bill 21.<\/p>\n<p>The 2019 law bans some public sector workers from wearing religious symbols on the job and the legislation includes a provision that overrides the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.<\/p>\n<p>Isabelle Brunet, lawyer for the Quebec government, told the court that the province does not have to justify its use of the override provision, known as the notwithstanding clause.<\/p>\n<p>Brunet says the clause shields laws from legal scrutiny, including from declaratory judgments \u2014 when judges declare that a Charter right has been violated but don&#8217;t issue a specific order for damages or other remedy.<\/p>\n<p>However, Justice Nicholas Kasirer pushed back, saying there is nothing written in the Constitution that prohibits a judge\u00a0from issuing a declaratory judgment on a law invoking the notwithstanding clause.<\/p>\n<p>On Monday, lawyers for the groups challenging Bill 21 told the court that the law goes too far in circumventing Charter rights and is unconstitutional.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":558306,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-558305","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558305","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558305"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558305\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/558306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}