WiCCD is grateful to Maija Martin, our first Litigation Director for the first three years and Megan Stephens who took over that role as the new Litigation and Advocacy Committee Chair.

Maija and Megan steered WiCCD’s first intervention together with lawyers Danielle Sandhu and Husna Sarwar from Goldblatt Partners for the Barbra Schlifer Commemorative Clinic who jointly intervened with WiCCD.

This case has attracted something like 70 interveners.

Our focus — on the relationship between s. 28 and s. 33 of the Charter— raises very significant issues about the meaning of s. 28 of the Charter. This relatively unknown provision of the Charter  provides that “Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights and freedoms referred to in it are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.” We are arguing that this provision is a substantive guarantee of gender equality to which s. 33 (the more well known notwithstanding clause) cannot extend.

WiCCD stands with Muslim women who wear the hijab and niqab, among all others adversely affected by Quebec’s wrong-headed and unconstitutional impugned legislation.

Our Factum is spectacular.

This was the first factum to be filed but it will be our second case heard in the SCC.

To hear submissions by WiCCD’s Director of Litigation and Advocacy, Megan Stephens, tune in on Thursday of this week, Day 4 for WiCCD and The Barbara Schlifer Commemorative Clinic’s joint submissions.

Thank you to Maija Martin for spearheading this case for WiCCD for years and for her role in the factum and written submissions throughout this file’s progress for WiCCD.

And our thanks to Goldblatt Partners for all their work and support in this case as well.

Counsel list – there are approx 150 lawyers involved in this case. 

https://www.scc-csc.ca/cases-dossiers/hearings-audiences/scheduled-prevues/41231/

A total of 11 hr 40 minutes of oral argument may be watched on SCC TV

The live webcast link is here

https://www.scc-csc.ca/cases-dossiers/hearings-audiences/live-endirect/

Case information here:

https://www.scc-csc.ca/cases-dossiers/search-recherche/41231/

WiCCD is intervening – you can check out the Factum on the website as well as here

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tlHIqMbyAiYJy5hDg3tX_w2CDznrVUZq/view?usp=sharing

For more in WiCCD’s Intervention Journey and our First to Make it to hearing, the Korduner appeal, see this earlier post:

And whatever else is the case, this piece in the Beaverton will always be my favourite and we do well to remember it this week: