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‘Blissed Out: Section 15 At Twenty’, Margot Young

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This paper was written for the 20th anniversary of the coming into force of section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Unfortunately the same themes that defeated Stella Bliss in 1979, when she launched her Canadian Bill of Rights challenge to the Canadian Unemployment Insurance Act continue. While equality law has moved on from the specific facts of Bliss v. Canada (Attorney General), [1979] 1 S.C.R. 183, and from some of the discrete judicial conclusions in that case, it is still true that the series of critical ways of understanding the relationship between equality rights, individuals and …