What does Charter Section 6 protect?

Section 6 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protects mobility rights. Section 6(1) gives every Canadian citizen the right to enter, remain in, and leave Canada. Section 6(2) gives every citizen and every permanent resident the right to move to and take up residence in any province and the right to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province. Section 6 is one of the few Charter rights immune from override under the section 33 notwithstanding clause.

Section 6(3) allows laws of general application that do not discriminate primarily on the basis of province of residence, and reasonable residency requirements for receipt of publicly provided social services. Section 6(4) preserves provincial affirmative-action programmes for residents of provinces with employment rates below the national average. The leading case interpreting section 6 is Black v. Law Society of Alberta (1989), which struck down restrictions on out-of-province lawyers practising in Alberta.

Section 6 supports Canada as a single integrated economic union. The Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CFTA), in force July 1, 2017, operationalises section 6 by addressing labour mobility for over 200 regulated occupations, harmonising rules across provinces, and establishing the Regulatory Reconciliation and Cooperation Table to reduce non-tariff barriers. Recent Supreme Court interpretations include Canadian Egg Marketing Agency v. Richardson (1998), which upheld supply-management rules against a section 6 challenge, and Reference re Securities Act (2011), which addressed federal regulation of an interprovincial securities market.

Section 6 does not apply to non-citizens or non-permanent-residents. Citizenship-revocation procedures under the federal Citizenship Act engage section 6 and section 7. Pandemic-era federal travel restrictions of 2020 to 2022 (mandatory quarantine, vaccine mandates for travel) generated section 6 litigation, with most restrictions upheld as section 1 justified limits in cases including Spencer v. Canada (2021). Hans Island Treaty boundary changes (2022) raised no section 6 issues because the treaty concerned uninhabited territory.