When a government invokes the notwithstanding clause, like Alberta’s just did on three transgender policy bills, it doesn’t need to specify which rights within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms its legislation needs an exemption from.

It could be any or all of the 10 Charter sections the constitution permits a provincial or federal government to act notwithstanding of. If that legislature invokes it, there’s no way anybody who feels that specific government policy violated their rights can get it overturned in court.

This broad exemption from Charter rights, used sparingly in Alberta over the 43 years of the notwithstanding clause’s existence, is being invoked for the second, third and fourth time within a month, following Premier Danielle Smith’s wielding of it to end the teache

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