Section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a section of the Charter that, as part of a range of provisions within the section 25 to section 31 bloc, helps determine how rights in other sections of the Charter should be interpreted and applied by the courts. It is believed that section 27 "officially recognized" a Canadian value, namely multiculturalism.

The section reads,

When the Charter was enacted in 1982, constitutional scholar Peter Hogg observed that this section did not actually contain a right; namely, it did not say that Canadians have a right to multiculturalism. The section was instead meant to guide the interpretation of the Charter to respect Canada's multiculturalism. Hogg also remarked that it was difficult to see how this could have a large impact on the reading of the Charter, and thus section 27 could be "more of a rhetorical flourish than an operative provision."

Section 27 can be seen as a declaration of a national value of multiculturalism. In 2002, polls found 86% of Canadians approved of this section.

In Canada, multicultural policy had been adopted in 1971 following the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism, a government body set up in response to the grievances of Canada's French-speaking minority (concentrated in the province of Quebec). The report of the Commission advocated that the Canadian government should recognize Canada as a bilingual and bicultural society and adopt policies to preserve this character.

Section 27 has been referred to by the courts. The Court of Appeal for Ontario in Videoflicks Ltd. et al. v. R. (1984) argued that section 27 should receive "significance" from the courts, and that the section could reinforce freedom of religion (section 2). As this court put it, if a law limits the free exercise of religion, then the law is also of no use in promoting multiculturalism, since it affects a "part of one's culture which is religiously based." Hence, section 27 demands that governments must respect and tolerate various religions, even if this means that some cultural groups may be exempted from certain things the government compels the people to do, even if this proves to place "inconveniences" on the government. This line of thinking was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of Canada in R. v. Edwards Books and Art Ltd. (1986).

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