What does Charter Section 15 guarantee?

Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the equality rights of every individual. Section 15(1) provides: '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'. Section 15(2) protects ameliorative programmes designed to improve the conditions of disadvantaged groups (affirmative action).

Section 15 took effect on April 17, 1985, three years after the rest of the Charter, to give Parliament and the legislatures time to amend laws for compliance. The delay was negotiated during the 1981 patriation talks. Hundreds of federal and provincial laws were amended during the three-year window, including the Indian Act provisions stripping status from women who married non-status men (Bill C-31 of 1985), pension rules excluding same-sex partners, and many family-law statutes.

The Supreme Court of Canada has read in additional analogous grounds to the listed protected categories. Egan v. Canada (1995) and Vriend v. Alberta (1998) established sexual orientation as an analogous ground. Other recognised analogous grounds include marital status (Miron v. Trudel, 1995), citizenship (Andrews v. Law Society of British Columbia, 1989), and aboriginality-residence (Corbiere v. Canada, 1999). The current section 15 test was set out in Andrews (1989), refined in R. v. Kapp (2008), and consolidated in Withler v. Canada (2011) and Quebec v. A. (2013).

Section 15 has shaped Canadian equality jurisprudence in many areas. M. v. H. (1999) extended spousal-support obligations to same-sex couples. Eldridge v. British Columbia (1997) required the provision of sign-language interpretation in public health services. Reference re Same-Sex Marriage (2004) opened the way for the federal Civil Marriage Act of 2005. Section 15 is supported by the federal Canadian Human Rights Act of 1977, provincial human-rights codes, and section 28 of the Charter (which guarantees that all Charter rights apply equally to male and female persons and is itself immune from section 33 override).