Section 30 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section 30 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a section that, like other provisions within the section 25 to section 31 block, provides a guide as to how Charter rights should be interpreted and applied by Canadian courts. It addresses how the Charter applies in the territories of Canada. In 1982, when it became law, these were the Northwest Territories and the Yukon Territory. The Yukon Territory is now called Yukon, and Nunavut was created from the eastern Northwest Territories to become Canada's third territory in 1999.

Text

The section reads,

30. A reference in this Charter to a province or to the legislative assembly or legislature of a province shall be deemed to include a reference to the Yukon Territory and the Northwest Territories, or to the appropriate legislative authority thereof, as the case may be.

Function

As the government of Canada puts it on one of its websites, this means that "[t]he Charter applies to the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut in exactly the same way as it does to the provinces." Hence, section 30 is particularly important in regard to section 3, 4, 5, 6 and 23 rights. Since section 6 refers to rights to "move to and take up residence in any province" and to "pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province," section 30 is applied so that section 6 also guarantees rights to move to and pursue work in the territories of Canada. Likewise, section 30 extends section 23's guarantee of minority language educational rights for minority language groups in the provinces to minority language groups in the territories.

Section 30 also guarantees that territorial governments are bound by sections 3 to 5, which themselves only explicitly refer to provincial governments.