Canadian Charter Preamble

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The preamble to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom states, “Canada is grounded upon principles that recognize the supremacy of God” (Russell 1999). According to Russell (1999), this can also be considered the “God-clause.” The three articles discuss this notion of stating “the supremacy of God” in the preamble of the Canadian Charter. Although the articles have different views about the preamble, I highly agree with Russell’s (1999) article titled, “The Supremacy of God does not belong in the Constitution”. To begin with, Russell’s (1999) overall argument is that ‘God’ should not be mentioned in the preamble of the Canadian Charter. I agree with Russell (1999), as I highly support the idea that there should be a separation between …show more content…
I highly agree with Russell’s (1999) change, since Canada is a multicultural country the Charter should not favor a certain religion or God, but rather, unite the nation with ideas that support Canada’s secular and multicultural society. In addition, the definition of God may vary between individuals and shift as society changes, even Christians themselves do not agree about “how God commands us to live” (Russell 1999). Therefore, it is problematic to refer to such a complex term in a political document that is a supposed to outline individual’s rights and freedom, as ‘God’ can mean different things to different …show more content…
I disagree with the content of this article, as it fails to define ‘God’; what/who is God? Dueck (2012) illustrates that “the succinct preamble…reminds Canadians that God is the foundation of our laws,” but, Dueck fails to acknowledge the fact that not everyone believes in the same (or any) ‘God’, nor does every Canadian have the same religious background. In addition, I do not believe that ‘God’ needs to be mentioned in the Charter’s preamble nor does Canada have to be in a “covenant with God” in order to secure our rights to freedom of religion and expression of it (Dueck 2012). Although I support the fundamental ideas of ‘freedom of religion’, it seems as though Dueck’s (2012) argument gives voice to the Christian God and places Christianity as the superior religion.

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