Section Twenty-six of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Section 26 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, like other provisions within the section 25 to 31 bloc, provides a guide in interpreting how the Charter should affect Canadian society. The section's particular role is to address rights not covered by or mentioned in the Charter.

The section reads:

As constitutional scholar Peter Hogg notes, this section is analogous to the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reads,

In other words, section 26 confirms that rights not within the Charter are nevertheless as real as they would be had the Charter never been enacted. According to Hogg, the purpose of this "cautionary provision" was to confirm pre-Charter rights will persist. Some rights that predate the Charter but cannot be found within it are anchored in the Canadian Bill of Rights and its provincial counterparts, as well as in the common law. The rights to "enjoyment of property" and to have one's rights and obligations determined through a fair hearing and through fundamental justice, are found in the Canadian Bill of Rights but are not duplicated in the Charter, and thus fall under the category of rights referred to in section 26. A notable case in which section 26 and the Bill of Rights were discussed is Singh v. Minister of Employment and Immigration (1985).

On one of its websites, the government of Canada claims there was also a more forward-looking purpose for section 26, namely to allow non-Charter rights to continue being created. Rights not included in the Charter but established in the future by Parliament, a provincial legislature, or in international law, will be valid.

...
Wikipedia