Section 30 – Application to the territories and territorial authorities

Provision

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.

Similar provisions

Other interpretive provisions of the Charter are found at sections 25-29 and 31. See also section 32 of the Charter defining its scope of application to include matters relating to the territories. See section 35 of the Interpretation Act defining a reference to a province to include a territory.

Purpose

The Supreme Court of Canada has not commented on the purpose of this section. However, lower court decisions indicate that section 30 of the Charter, together with section 32, mean that Charter rights apply in respect of matters within the authority of the legislative assembly of a territory (Friends of Democracy v. Northwest Territories (Attorney General), [1999] N.W.T.J. No. 28).

Section 30 does not specifically mention Nunavut, as the creation of the territory post-dated the enactment of Charter. However, jurisprudence has applied the Charter to matters within the competence of the Nunavut legislative assembly (see, e.g., E. (P.) v. Nunavut (Director of Child & Family Services) 2010 NUCJ 24; S. (J.) v. Nunavut (Minister of Health & Social Services) 2006 NUCJ 20).

Analysis

Analogous to what is provided by section 35 of the Interpretation Act in respect of federal statute, section 30 of the Charter defines references to a province in the Charter to include a territory. Section 30 must be read, however, together with section 31 of the Charter, which provides that the Charter does not extend legislative powers; as such, section 30 of the Charter does not extend the legislative powers of territories. Nevertheless, the effect of section 30 of the Charter is not diluted by section 32 which defines the scope of application of the Charter: the Charter applies to all areas of government jurisdiction including those delegated to the territories by Parliament (Fédération Franco-Ténoise v. Canada, 2001 FCA 220).

The content is current up until 2023-07-31.