Penetanguishene Charter Violation :: essays research papers

In Penetanguishene, the law now says that anyone under 16 out after 12am will be taken home. This was on VR News tonight, the reasons they listed--a skate park had been graffitied and a park bench was slightly burned in a fire. These all seem a little light to me, I guess to a town of less than 9000 people, it's very severe, but is that an excuse to defy the Constitutional rights of Canadians? I have so many problems with this, I don't know where to begin. I think I'll start with the Charter, section 15. (1) "Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability." I'd like to stress on equal protection and equal benefit without discrimination based on age. What is this? It's discriminating based on age. Penetanguishene has introduced a law targeted at a group of people, without taking in any individual merit (more on this later), and using age as the target point. We all have to remember that just because someone is a minor, it does not give the right for the government to abuse them. Unless it can be proven that all people in Penetanguishene under 16 out after 12am are committing a crime or are planning to commit a crime, this law is unconstitutional. This law infringes on section 2. c) by depriving the right to peaceful assembly as the police will not take into account what the people are doing and will take home anyone and everyone fitting the [already deemed unconstitutional] preset criteria. It infringes on section 7., it deprives liberty of these people to not give them the choice, and the reasons do not affect the principles of fundamental justice at all. So, what does the local Ontario Provincial Police have to say about enforcing an unconstitutional curfew? "It's not a curfew". According to the OPP, they are not introducing any new law, simply enforcing an already passed law (regrettably I can neither remember which jurisdiction it was under or what it was called, something about Youth and Family Services). A good question is what's the point of fighting this, Burlington has curfew bylaws and I don't say anything about them. Well it's simple, Burlington's curfew is there in case it has to be used, like a police officer's sidearm, they don't go around shooting everyone for anything, but should the rare occurrence that they need it, it's there.