What is the Canadian Bill of Rights of 1960?

The Canadian Bill of Rights is a federal statute enacted by Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservative government in 1960. It was the first national bill of rights in Canadian history and protected fundamental freedoms (including freedom of religion, of speech, of assembly and of the press), legal rights (including the right to counsel, the presumption of innocence, and protection against arbitrary detention), and equality before the law. The Bill of Rights remains in force today, though it has been largely superseded by the constitutional Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms enacted in 1982.

The Bill of Rights had two structural weaknesses that limited its impact. First, it was a federal statute and bound only federal law and federal government action, leaving provincial and municipal action untouched. Second, it operated as a rule of statutory construction rather than as a constitutional override: federal laws were to be 'so construed and applied as not to abrogate' Bill of Rights protections, but Parliament could expressly override the Bill in any new statute. Most courts gave the Bill a narrow interpretation in cases such as Attorney General of Canada v. Lavell (1974, Indian Act discrimination), Bliss v. Attorney General of Canada (1979, pregnancy and unemployment insurance), and R. v. Burnshine (1974).

The most significant Bill of Rights case was R. v. Drybones (1969), where the Supreme Court of Canada struck down section 94(b) of the Indian Act, which made it an offence for an Indian to be intoxicated off a reserve while the same conduct was not an offence for non-Indians. The court held that the provision violated the Bill of Rights guarantee of equality before the law and was therefore inoperative. Drybones was a notable but isolated success; the more common pattern was narrow interpretation that left the Bill with limited force.

Despite its limitations, the Bill of Rights established a legal vocabulary and a public expectation that Canada needed a stronger rights framework. Pierre Trudeau campaigned for constitutional entrenchment of rights from his entry into federal politics in 1965, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the Constitution Act, 1982 fulfilled that goal. The Bill of Rights remains in force as a federal statute, providing residual protections in some areas (notably section 1(a) protection of property rights, which is not in the Charter, and section 2(e) protection of fair hearings) and continues to be occasionally cited.