… ‘true’ democracy recognizes the power of the constitution — fruit of the constituent authority — to entrench the fundamental human rights and the basic values of the system against the power of the majority. Such a limitation of majority rule does not impair democracy but constitutes its full realization.
In 1982, Canada's written constitution acquired a bill of rights. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, 1982 emerged as the product of a prolonged debate as to the propriety and desirability of protecting, by judicial review, an array of constitutional norms as part of the “supreme law” of Canada. The richness of that debate precipitated a new constitutional model that enlisted not only the courts, but the legislature and executive as well, in the project of rights-protection.