Section Thirty of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a section of the Charter

Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a bill of rights entrenched in the Constitution of Canada. It forms the first part of the Constitution Act, 1982...

 that, like other provisions within the section 25

Section Twenty-five of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Twenty-five of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the first section under the heading "General" in the Charter, and like other sections within the "General" sphere, it aids in the interpretation of rights elsewhere in the Charter...

 to section 31

Section Thirty-one of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Thirty-one of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a part of the Constitution of Canada, which clarifies that the Charter does not increase the powers of either the federal government or the legislatures of the provinces of Canada...

 bloc, provides a guide as to how Charter rights should be interpreted and applied by Canadian courts

Court system of Canada

The court system of Canada is made up of many courts differing in levels of legal superiority and separated by jurisdiction. Some of the courts are federal in nature while others are provincial or territorial....

. Section 30's particular role is to address how the Charter applies in the territories of Canada

Provinces and territories of Canada

The provinces and territories of Canada combine to make up the world's second-largest country by area. There are ten provinces and three territories...

. In 1982, when section 30 first became law, these were the Northwest Territories

Northwest Territories

The Northwest Territories is a federal territory of Canada.Located in northern Canada, the territory borders Canada's two other territories, Yukon to the west and Nunavut to the east, and three provinces: British Columbia to the southwest, and Alberta and Saskatchewan to the south...

 and the Yukon Territory

Yukon

Yukon is the westernmost and smallest of Canada's three federal territories. It was named after the Yukon River. The word Yukon means "Great River" in Gwich’in....

. Nunavut

Nunavut

Nunavut is the largest and newest federal territory of Canada; it was separated officially from the Northwest Territories on April 1, 1999, via the Nunavut Act and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement Act, though the actual boundaries had been established in 1993...

 has since broken away from the Northwest Territories to become Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

's third territory; section 30 applies to it as well.

Text

The section reads,

Function

As the government of Canada

Government of Canada

The Government of Canada, formally Her Majesty's Government, is the system whereby the federation of Canada is administered by a common authority; in Canadian English, the term can mean either the collective set of institutions or specifically the Queen-in-Council...

 puts it on one of its website

Website

A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

s, this means that "The Charter applies to the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in exactly the same way as it does to the provinces." Hence, section 30 is particularly important in regard to section 3

Section Three of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Three of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a section of the Charter that constitutionally guarantees all Canadian citizens the democratic right to vote in a general federal or provincial election and the right to be eligible for membership in the House of Commons or of a...

, 4

Section Four of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Four of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is one of three democratic rights sections in the Charter. Section 4 guarantees that federal and provincial elections must take place from time to time. Subsection 4 provides that the maximum term of the House of Commons, and of all the...

, 5

Section Five of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Five of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a part of the Constitution of Canada, and the last of three democratic rights in the Charter. Its role is to establish a rule regarding how frequently the Parliament of Canada and the legislatures of the provinces and territories of...

, 6

Section Six of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Six of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the section of the Canadian Constitution's Charter of Rights that protects the mobility rights of Canadian citizens, and to a lesser extent that of permanent residents. By mobility rights, the section refers to the individual practice...

 and 23

Section Twenty-three of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Twenty-three of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is the section of the Charter that constitutionally guarantees minority language educational rights to French-speaking communities outside Quebec, and, to a lesser extent, English-speaking minorities in Quebec...

 rights. Since section 6 refers to rights to "move to and take up residence in any province" and to "pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province," section 30 is applied so that section 6 also guarantees rights to move to and pursue work in the territories of Canada. Likewise, section 30 extends section 23's guarantee of minority language

Minority language

A minority language is a language spoken by a minority of the population of a territory. Such people are termed linguistic minorities or language minorities.-International politics:...

 education

Education in Canada

Education in Canada is for the most part provided publicly, funded and overseen by federal, provincial, and local governments. Education is within provincial jurisdiction and the curriculum is overseen by the province. Education in Canada is generally divided into primary education, followed by...

al rights for minority language groups in the provinces to minority language groups in the territories.

Section 30 also guarantees that territorial governments are bound by sections 3 to 5, which themselves only explicitly refer to provincial governments. Hence, those in the territories will have the right to vote or run in territorial elections (section 3), territorial governments cannot operate for longer than 5 years without an election (section 4), and territorial governments must sit at least once a year (section 5).

The other rights in the other sections of the Charter are also valid and enforceable in the territories, perhaps through section 30 but mainly through section 32

Section Thirty-two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Thirty-two of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms concerns the application and scope of the Charter. Only claims based on the type of law contemplated by this section can be brought before the Court....

, which states that the Charter applies to the federal government. The authority of the territorial governments is derived from the Canadian Parliament.

The content of section 30 dates back to the original draft of the Charter, which was published in October 1980.

Judicial interpretation

In the case Fédération Franco-ténoise v. Canada (C.A.) (2001), the Federal Court of Appeal

Federal Court of Appeal (Canada)

The Federal Court of Appeal is a Canadian appellate court that hears cases concerning federal matters arising from certain federal Acts. The court was created on July 2, 2003 by the Courts Administration Service Act when it and the Federal Court were split from its predecessor, the Federal Court of...

 discussed section 30 when it rejected the government of the Northwest Territories' claim that the territory now had legal power and independence similar to those of the provinces. (The purpose of this claim was to avoid the obligations of providing official language

Official language

An official language is a language that is given a special legal status in a particular country, state, or other jurisdiction. Typically a nation's official language will be the one used in that nation's courts, parliament and administration. However, official status can also be used to give a...

 rights under the Charter, which the federal government has to do but no provinces besides New Brunswick

New Brunswick

New Brunswick is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the only province in the federation that is constitutionally bilingual . The provincial capital is Fredericton and Saint John is the most populous city. Greater Moncton is the largest Census Metropolitan Area...

 have to do). The territorial government based its theory in Parliament's treatment of the territories, which was becoming more like how it treated the provinces. Some of Parliament's laws had been designed so that they would not be applicable in the territories. Moreover, section 30 created another similarity between the provinces and territories. However, the Court replied that section 30 of the Charter creates similarities between provinces and territories only in regard to the reading of the Charter. Moreover, section 31

Section Thirty-one of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Thirty-one of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a part of the Constitution of Canada, which clarifies that the Charter does not increase the powers of either the federal government or the legislatures of the provinces of Canada...

, which stipulates that the Charter does not increase powers of legislative bodies, indicates section 30 cannot increase the powers of the territorial legislature to the extent that a territory can achieve equality with the provinces. However, the Court also rejected the claim by those who had brought legal action against the territorial government that section 30 is limited by section 32; together these two sections simply mean that the Charter applies to all territorial laws.

Earlier, in 1983, similar arguments were made to achieve section 20

Section Twenty of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section Twenty of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is one of the sections of the Charter dealing with Canada's two official languages, English and French. Along with section 16, section 20 is one of the few sections under the title "Official Languages of Canada" that guarantees...

 rights in the Yukon, so that traffic ticket

Traffic ticket

A traffic ticket is a notice issued by a law enforcement official to a motorist or other road user, accusing violation of traffic laws. Traffic tickets generally come in two forms, citing a moving violation, such as exceeding the speed limit, or a non-moving violation, such as a parking violation,...

s could be available in the French language

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

. It was argued sections 30 and 32 should together indicate such rights exist in the territories. The courts dismissed the argument since a literal reading of section 20 shows it bounds only the federal government (and New Brunswick), not the territorial governments.