[DOWNLOAD] "Gosselin V. Quebec: Back to the Poorhouse (Social Assistance Discrimination Under Charter Section 15) (Canada)" by McGill Law Journal * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Gosselin V. Quebec: Back to the Poorhouse (Social Assistance Discrimination Under Charter Section 15) (Canada)
- Author : McGill Law Journal
- Release Date : January 01, 2003
- Genre: Law,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 342 KB
Description
The case of Gosselin v. Quebec (A.G.) made its way to the Supreme Court of Canada based on a claim that the social assistance regulations in Quebec during the 1980s were discriminatory: single individuals under the age of thirty, who were considered employable, received only one third of the assistance granted to their older counterparts. The Court's divergent judgments and its narrow five-to-four split reflect the range and complexity of issues raised by this case. This comment focuses on the Court's treatment of the discrimination analysis under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Through a comparison of the varied decisions to previous equality jurisprudence, the authors raise four criticisms of the section 15 analyses taken by the judges in Gosselin. First, the case highlights how evidentiary requirements can be used as a harder to equality. Second, repeated references to Law v. Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration) suggest a regressive trend in the Court's definition if equality. Third, an insufficient consideration of intersectionality is identified as a distorting factor in the Court's the equality analyses. Finally, the authors point to certain assumptions underlying the judgments in Gosselin, which serve to perpetuate stereotypes regarding social assistance that have impaired the human dignity of those living in poverty.