Section 31 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Charter does not extend legislative powers
Section 31 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a part of the Constitution of Canada, which clarifies that the Charter does not increase the powers of either the federal government or the legislatures of the provinces of Canada. As a result, only the courts may enforce the rights in the Charter.
Text
The section reads,
31. Nothing in this Charter extends the legislative powers of any body or authority.
Enforcement of the Charter
As the government of Canada notes, this shows the Charter does not disturb the balance of the distribution of legislative powers under the Constitution Act, 1867. Constitutional scholar Peter Hogg has called section 31 a "cautionary provision." He specifically notes that section 31 denies the federal Parliament of Canada any additional powers. Indeed, section 31 is a departure from the educational rights in the Constitution Act, 1867. Section 93(4) of that Act gives the federal Parliament the power to intervene if a provincial government fails to respect certain rights. The federal government could then pass and enforce laws that would uphold the rights.
The adoption of section 31 was probably meant to avoid an unfavourable reaction against the Charter from the provinces.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as charter does not extend legislative powers. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2865555. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1867.
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This entry incorporates text from “Section 31 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.