Jehovah's Witnesses is a nontrinitarian, millenarian, restorationist Christian denomination. The group grew out of the Bible Student movement founded by Charles Taze Russell in the nineteenth century. In 2024, Jehovah's Witnesses reported a peak membership of approximately 9 million worldwide.
The implied bill of rights is a theory in Canadian jurisprudence which proposed that as a consequence of the British North America Act, certain important civil liberties could not be abrogated by the government. The significance of an implied bill of rights has decreased since the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, an entrenched written bill of rights, but remains important for understanding the evolution of Canadian human rights law and the Constitution of Canada. In the 1938 decision of Reference Re Alberta Statutes, the Supreme Court of Canada first recognized an implied bill of rights.
Louis-Alexandre Taschereau was the 14th premier of Quebec from 1920 to 1936. A member of the Parti libéral du Québec, Taschereau's near 16-year tenure remains the longest uninterrupted term of office among Quebec premiers.
The Act to Protect the Province Against Communistic Propaganda, commonly known as the "Padlock Law" or "Padlock Act", was a law in the province of Quebec, Canada that allowed the Attorney General of Quebec to close off access to property suspected of being used to propagate or disseminate communist propaganda. The law was introduced by the Union Nationale government of Maurice Duplessis and made it illegal to "use [a house] or allow any person to make use of it to propagate Communism or Bolshevism by any means whatsoever". This included printing, publishing or distributing of "any newspaper, periodical, pamphlet, circular, document or writing, propagating Communism or Bolshevism". Violations of the Act subjected such property to closure by the Attorney General, including the locking of access doors with padlocks, against any use whatsoever for a period of up to one year and any person found guilty of involvement in prohibited media activities could be incarcerated for three to thirteen months.
The Coffin affair was an event in Canadian history in which a man named Wilbert Coffin was hanged for the murder of three men. The affair started in June 1953 in Gaspésie when three men from Pennsylvania were reported missing. Their bodies were found a month later deep in the woods 60 km (37 mi) from the nearest town.
Francis Reginald Scott (1899–1985), commonly known as Frank Scott or F. R. Scott, was a lawyer, Canadian poet, intellectual, and constitutional scholar. He helped found the first Canadian social democratic party, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, and its successor, the New Democratic Party. He won Canada's top literary prize, the Governor General's Award, twice, once for poetry and once for non-fiction. He was married to artist Marian Dale Scott.
The court system of Canada is made up of many courts differing in levels of legal superiority and separated by jurisdiction. In the courts, the judiciary interpret and apply the law of Canada. Some of the courts are federal in nature, while others are provincial or territorial.
Ivan Cleveland Rand was a Canadian lawyer, politician, academic, and justice of the Supreme Court of Canada. He has been described as "probably the greatest judge in Canada's history".
The Duplessis Orphans were a population of Canadian children wrongly certified as mentally ill by the provincial government of Quebec and confined to psychiatric institutions in the 1940s and 1950s. Many of these children were deliberately miscertified in order to acquire additional subsidies from the federal government. They are named for Maurice Duplessis, who served as Premier of Quebec for five non-consecutive terms between 1936 and 1959. The controversies associated with Duplessis, and particularly the corruption and abuse concerning the Duplessis orphans, have led to the popular historic conception of his term as Premier as La Grande Noirceur by its critics.
Freedom of religion in Canada is a constitutionally protected right, allowing believers the freedom to assemble and worship without limitation or interference.
Various individuals, courts and the media around the world have raised concerns about the manner in which cases of child sexual abuse are handled when they occur in congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses. An independent 2009 study in Norway was critical of how Jehovah's Witnesses dealt with cases of child sexual abuse but stated there is no indication that the rate of sexual abuse among Jehovah's Witnesses is higher than found in general society. The organization's stated position is that it abhors child sexual abuse.
British Columbia v Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd, [2005] 2 S.C.R. 473, 2005 SCC 49, is a decision of the Supreme Court of Canada where the Court found that the provincial Tobacco Damages and Health Care Costs Recovery Act, which allowed the government to sue tobacco companies, was constitutionally valid. Imperial Tobacco Canada is an indirect subsidiary of British American Tobacco.
Hodge v The Queen is a Canadian constitutional law decision of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in 1883, at that time the highest court of appeal in the British Empire, including Canada. It was decided under the British North America Act, 1867, now known as the Constitution Act, 1867.
Saumur v Quebec (City of) [1953] 2 S.C.R. 299 is a famous constitutional decision of the Supreme Court of Canada which struck down a municipal by-law prohibiting the distribution of literature to the public.
Jehovah's Witnesses are a religious group that is an outgrowth of the Bible student movement founded by Charles Taze Russell in the nineteenth century. The Christian denomination had an early presence in Canada, with many adherents experiencing religious persecution, particularly in Quebec. Jehovah's Witnesses were banned from 1940 to 1943 as a result of the War Measures Act. The passing of the Canadian Bill of Rights in 1960 and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982 established broader protections for Jehovah's Witnesses and their freedom to worship.
The Grande Noirceur refers to the regime of conservative policies undertaken by the governing body of Quebec Premier Maurice Le Noblet Duplessis from 1936 to 1939 and from 1944 to 1959.
Canadian Union of Public Employees v Ontario (Minister of Labour), 2003 SCC 29, is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on arbitration and bias in administrative law. The court held that it was patently unreasonable for the Minister of Labour to appoint retired judges as arbitrators in labour disputes without considering their expertise in labour relations under the Hospital Labour Disputes Arbitrations Act.
Maurice Duplessis was Premier of Quebec, Canada, from 1936 to 1939 and again from 1944 to 1959 as leader of the Union Nationale (UN) caucus in the Legislative Assembly of Quebec, the lower house of the Quebec Legislature. The first term of the longest-serving premier of the province since Confederation lasted three years (1936–1939) and was interrupted when he lost a snap election in 1939. He returned to power in 1944 and ruled the province uninterruptedly until his death in September 1959, maintaining majorities in three following elections. The premier's death threw the Union Nationale into disarray. The next year, the party lost power to the Liberals under Jean Lesage, who reversed a lot of Duplessis's policies and radically changed Quebec's politics by leading the province through the Quiet Revolution.
Lamb v Benoit, [1959] SCR 321 was a legal case that was heard by the Supreme Court of Canada. Louise Lamb, a Jehovah's Witness, was arrested for distributing religious pamphlets in Verdun, Quebec, in 1946, along with three other members of the religion.
