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Coat of Arms |
Bill of
Rights | Canadian Flag
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The Mace
At the time of
Confederation, little thought was given to the
entrenchment of human liberties in a constitutional
document. The Fathers of Confederation saw the new
nation as an inheritor of the freedoms enshrined in
English constitutional law and it was not thought
necessary to make specific reference to them in the
British North American Act.
Until the Second World War, there was
little popular interest in guarantees of civil
liberties. The events of the war and the realization
that liberties could be denied even in democracies
increased interest in the desirability of a Bill of
Rights for Canadians. In the 1940s and 1950s, various
political and legal organizations advocated such a bill
and the idea was studied by various Parliamentary
Committees. The Bill of Rights which received Royal
Assent on August 10, 1960, however, is associated mainly
with the Right Honourable John G. Diefenbaker, who raised
the issue in the House of Commons in 1945 and continued
to press for such a Bill until, as Prime Minister, he
was in a position to realize his ambition. After study
by a special House of Commons Committee, the bill was
unanimously passed in its present form. |
