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In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled the federal Liberal government's carbon pricing regime is constitutional — a major decision that allows Ottawa to push ahead with its ambitious plan to ensure every province and territory has a price on carbon to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Some provinces — notably Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan — have forcefully opposed the carbon tax, arguing natural resources are in the provinces' jurisdiction under the Constitution. Chief Justice Richard Wagner, writing for the majority, said the federal government is free to impose minimum pricing standards because the threat of climate...

Canada’s human rights hate speech laws are a constitutionally valid limit on freedom of expression, the Supreme Court has unanimously ruled in a landmark judgment. The judgment in the case of William Whatcott of Saskatchewan reaffirms the Canadian approach to hate speech, that it can be limited by law to address the problem of hate speech, unlike the American approach, in which speech cannot be limited except in the most extreme circumstances. But it upheld the controversial legal concept of speech that is “likely to expose” certain groups to hatred. “The difficulty of establishing causality and the seriousness of the...

OTTAWA, October 8, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) - In a landmark decision last Friday, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that people who are HIV-positive do not need to tell their sex partners they have the disease, as long as they have low levels of the virus and use a condom during sexual intercourse. The 9-0 ruling says that the “realistic possibility of transmission of HIV is negated” if the infected person has a “low viral load and uses a condom”, superseding a 1998 decision. Under the previous law, HIV-positive people who did not tell partners they had the virus could be...

        Abortion Methods     PoliticsInternationalWhat Can I Do? Educational InformationNews PartnersCulture Features Crisis Pregnancy Support Free DailyE-News Subscribe Friends New on LifeSite Donate About Us Contact Site Map Wednesday July 25, 2007 Printer friendly version Email to a friend   Canada's Crossroads Walkers Enter Toronto With Parliament Hill Only Two Weeks Away By Elizabeth O'BrienTORONTO, ON, July 25, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - With thousands of kilometers behind them and just over two weeks away from their final goal at Parliament Hill, the Crossroads pro-life walkers will be entering Toronto this weekend.Since they started walking in Vancouver,...

But it does say in effect: Deliver better care or permit the development of a private system. "The prohibition on obtaining private health insurance might be constitutional in circumstances where health-care services are reasonable as to both quality and timeliness," the ruling reads, but it "is not constitutional where the public system fails to deliver reasonable services." The Justices who sit on Canada's Supreme Court, by the way, aren't a bunch of Scalias of the North. This is the same court that last year unanimously declared gay marriage constitutional. ... The larger lesson here is that health care isn't immune...

Supreme Court OK's same-sex marriage Last Updated Thu, 09 Dec 2004 13:19:37 EST OTTAWA - The Supreme Court of Canada says the federal government can change the definition of marriage, giving gays and lesbians the legal right to marry. In a non-binding opinion released Thursday morning, the court reaffirmed religious freedoms under the Charter, saying religious officials opposed to same-sex marriages do not have to perform them. It declined to answer a fourth question added by Paul Martin when he became prime minister: whether the current definition of marriage as a man and a woman was unconstitutional. But the court...