page_title: List of Canadian constitutional documents
section_title: Judicial interpretations
hierarchical_section_title: List of Canadian constitutional documents / Judicial interpretations
caption_attribution_description: English: Michael Hendricks (right) and René Leboeuf, photo showing both their faces. Taken at their wedding (the first same-sex marriage in Quebec), 1 April 2004. Photo by Montrealais.
context_page_description: The Constitution of Canada is a large number of documents that have been entrenched in the constitution by various means. Regardless of how documents became entrenched, together those documents form the supreme law of Canada; no non-constitutional law may conflict with them, and none of them may be changed without following the amending formula given in Part V of the Constitution Act, 1982.
  The constitution includes legislation that was specifically written as constitutional documents, statutes that have become entrenched since their original creation, some treaties and royal proclamations, unwritten procedures adopted from the British parliamentary system of government, and unwritten underlying values.
  The oldest Canadian constitutional documents were enacted before Confederation, and originated from the English or British government. Those documents were received—along with many subconstitutional laws—into the law of Canada and its provinces by means of section 129 of the Constitution Act, 1867.
context_section_description: Interpretation of the Canadian Constitution has been significantly affected by the decisions of courts, which have the power to determine the meaning of phrases and, in some cases, even read into it rules that are implied but not directly stated. Canada's Constitution is not limited to the interpretation that would have been used by the original drafters, unlike countries that use originalism to interpret their constitutions. The power of the courts to update the meaning of the Constitution to fit with changing times was first established in the Persons Case, which decided that the word "person" in the Constitution included women. The Persons Case referred to this principle as the "living tree doctrine".
  In spite of the living tree doctrine, for several decades Canadian courts mostly limited themselves to interpreting the Constitution for issues of jurisdiction. For example, courts determined that airports were within the power of the federal government even though the original drafters of the Constitution could not have conceived of an airport. After the introduction of the Constitution Act, 1982 and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canadian courts became much more active in interpretation of Constitutional questions. One notable example is in the case of gay rights and section 15(1) of the Charter. Section 15(1) lists grounds against which people may not be discriminated by the government, and includes race, religion, sex, and others, but it does not limit itself to the listed grounds. Consequently, numerous provincial superior court cases, beginning with Halpern v. Canada (Attorney General) in Ontario, ruled that sexual orientation was an unwritten protected ground under section 15(1).
caption: Michael Hendricks and René Leboeuf become the first same-sex couple to legally marry in Quebec after the Quebec Court of Appeal finds that sexual orientation is an unwritten protected ground in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in the case Hendricks and Leboeuf v Quebec.
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