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CFE Intervener Factum in the Supreme Court of Canada – UR Pride challenged the constitutionality of a Saskatchewan policy that parental consent was required if students under the age of 16 requested that schools use preferred first names and pronouns. In response, Saskatchewan amended its Education Act, incorporating the policy into law and invoked the Charter’s notwithstanding clause (s. 33). UR Pride sought a declaration that the legislation is unconstitutional. Saskatchewan argued that once it incorporated s. 33, the issue of constitutionality is moot and the court cannot issue a declaratory judgment. In its factum CFE makes three submissions. First, s. 33 should be interpreted in light of the public’s right to be informed in a democracy. Second, the public’s right to be informed pre-dates the Charter and is a throughline in the Supreme Court’s interpretation of Charter provisions, most notably ss. 2(b), 3 and 4. Third, because the invocation of the notwithstanding clause has to be renewed every five years, meaning there will be an election that allows the public to defeat a government if it objects to the government’s use of s. 33, judicial declarations are necessary information if the public is to be an effective check against misuse of s. 33.

It is widely understood that a society reveals its character in how it treats those with the least power. In Canada, that measure is under strain.Planned reductions of $132.2 million to Correctional Service Canada spending by the 2028–29 fiscal year are expected to affect institutional services, including prison libraries. Proposals to eliminate professional library staff, framed as administrative efficiency, risk removing a core element of rehabilitation. More fundamentally, they risk creating conditions of state-sanctioned information poverty behind bars.

On May 13, the Alberta government passed Bill 28 which amends the Libraries Act to grant the Minister of Municipal Affairs, currently Dan Williams, authority over “management, administration or operation” of every public library in the province. The Bill gives the Minister unprecedented power to issue “any order that the Minister considers appropriate.” 

Probably not, for reasons that point to the limits of what Canada can do here. Recently, governments in Manitoba and Ontario have signaled their support for a ban on social media for children under 16 years of age, and last month, the federal Liberals passed a resolution to this effect at a party convention. Manitoba’s premier Wab Kinew and the national Liberal Party are also keen to ban youth access to “all AI chatbots and other potentially harmful forms of AI interaction.”