Derek Moran
[7] Property and Economic Rights
What is immediately striking about s. 7 is the inclusion of "security of the person" as opposed to "property". This stands in contrast to the classic liberal formulation, adopted, for example, in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments in the American Bill of Rights. The intentional exclusion of property from s. 7, and the substitution therefore of "security of the person" has a dual effect. First, it leads to a general inference that economic rights as generally encompassed by the term "property" are not within the perimeters of the s. 7 guarantee. This is not to declare, however, that no right with an economic component can fall within "security of the person". Lower courts have found that the rubric of "economic rights" embraces a broad spectrum of interests, ranging from such rights, included in various international covenants, as rights to social security, equal pay for equal work, adequate food, clothing and shelter, to traditional property - contract rights. To exclude all of these at this early moment in the history of Charter interpretation seems to be precipitous. This Court does not, at this moment, choose to pronounce upon whether those economic rights fundamental to human life or survival are to be treated as though they are of the same ilk as corporate-commercial economic rights. In so stating, this Court finds the second effect of the inclusion of "security of the person" to be that a corporation's economic rights find no constitutional protection in that section: Irwin Toy Ltd. v. A.G. Que., [1989] 1 S.C.R. 927.
http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/charter_digest/s-7.html
Printed copy · Anthology Volume 3, page 1313 · cut by a page break
