Notwithstanding

Fo Niemi, from the Centre for Research-Action on Race Relations, says that new Canadians don’t see the Charter as something that attempts to resolve provincial-federal tension or defines a power division between Parliament and the judiciary. For immigrants, the document is a social contract and a promise that is tangible and potent. I assume it’s not just new Canadians who feel this way, but I take his point: what could be better than showing up in a country and being told that most of the things that make you different will be respected.

After the formal presentations, it’s questions from the audience. Laforest jumps in on most of these, to the translators’ chagrin. I take my headphones off and just sit back to admire the landscape of his discourse: rugged, formidable, extravagant. I convince myself that I can actually understand a word or two as he bulldozes a guy who’s been to the microphone several times already complaining that Quebec’s unilingual Anglos are getting screwed.

Lunch is called, and I’m spent. I head upstairs to my hotel room and order a sandwich. As I eat, I try to organize my notes. I start to think seriously about Roderick Macdonald’s assertion, raised in his talk and explicated in an article written for the February 2007 issue of Policy Options magazine, that thanks to the Charter “there has been a general tendency to legislative inflation (hyperlexis), and a proliferation of statutory instruments cast in broad, abstract formulas.” When I wake up, I realize I’m too late for the final official session of the day, “Judicial Review and Charter Practices.” I suppress my sorrow, put on my coat, and go for a walk.

This is a mistake, as it’s -20°C on Rue Sherbrooke, with snow flying horizontally that hits my few square inches of exposed flesh like tiny ninja throwing stars. I find a mall and walk around, now sweating. Thoughts on the Conference So Far While Trapped in Eaton Centre, Montreal:

1. You know you’re in the company of a very particular group when the phrase “entrenched in the entrenchment” is used and no one howls.

2. Graduate students they may be, but they’re still students. I’m surrounded by them during the panels, and as the intellectual temperature in the room has risen I’ve been enveloped by the smell of post-adolescent boys: nachos and wet newsprint.

3. The Charter begins with an article limiting powers that it hasn’t yet described. This makes the document, among many other things, adorable.

4. Banana Republic Montreal is exactly the same as Banana Republic Toronto, except more pink for men.

5. I’ve learned that since the amending formula was created, it’s become immeasurably harder to amend the Constitution.

6. At these conferences, it’s invariably the wrong people who choose to speak without notes.