Shopping on Sundays was illegal till a Calgary drug mart fought at Supreme Court

cbc.ca

4 pointsneom3 comments

Can someone expound on this bit?

Big M Drug Mart had been charged in May of 1982. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms came into force just a month prior.

Suddenly, there was a novel way to defend against the charge.

"You couldn't do it on the evidence, because they were clearly engaged in merchandising that wasn't permitted by the statute," Boyle said. "But now they had the ability to take on the law itself. That was something new."

As a US-ian, I'm used to the Constitution being an already-in-place legal base, from which challenges like this could be raised. What did the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms introduce that wasn't there before?

Given Lord’s Day Act mandated Sunday as a day of rest and prohibited business transactions on that day, was a violation of the Charter’s guarantee of freedom of conscience and religion.

I never knew this was a thing. Did the Lord's Day Act extend to restaurants? Asking because I recall a Sun brunch on the CA side of Niagara in 1980.

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