Canadian premiers are too quick to override rights, former PM Jean Chrétien warns

TORONTO — Canada’s premiers are too quick to use the notwithstanding clause for “marginal reasons” and have lost sight of its original purpose, former prime minister Jean Chrétien said Wednesday evening.

Chrétien, who as justice minister negotiated the clause’s inclusion in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1981, said provinces are using it “for anything” 40 years later.

“It was not designed for that. It was designed (for) when there was a court going too far, politicians can intervene,” he said of the provision, which gives legislatures the ability to override certain portions of the Charter for up to five years.

“That worries me very, very much.”

He did not share specifics. Last week, Alberta invoked the clause to force striking teachers back to work. Quebec, Ontario and Saskatchewan have also used it in recent years.

In wide-ranging remarks at a Journalists for Human Rights event in Toronto, the former prime minister also shared concerns about the state of democracy around the globe, especially in the United States.

Speaking on the one-year anniversary of U.S. President Donald Trump being elected for a second term, Chrétien said it was a “very bad sign” that the president has moved to deploy National Guard troops in several major U.S. cities to quell protests.

Chrétien, 91, said he doesn’t call to offer prime ministers advice, saying he doesn’t want to be the “Monday morning quarterback.”

But asked how he would respond to tariffs imposed by the Trump administration and the president’s threats of annexation, he said Canada has to step up. Alluding to the current government of Prime Minister Mark Carney, Chrétien said: “I’m quite happy with the present situation.”

The former prime minister shared that he had breakfast with former U.S. president Bill Clinton on Wednesday morning, and that Clinton was in a good mood after a victorious night for the Democrats in a slate of elections on Tuesday, including the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City.

Chrétien said he took the results as a positive sign that Americans are paying attention to what’s happening.

In conversation with former CTV anchor Lisa Laflamme days after the 30th anniversary of the Quebec referendum, the former prime minister recalled how Clinton had supported Canadian unity at the time.

He also retold the story from the night of an assassination attempt, a few days after the referendum on Nov. 5, 1995.

“In the middle of the night, my wife said to me, ‘There’s a stranger in the house,'” he said. She described the man as wearing a toque and gloves, and “he looked like Forrest Gump.”

The man, who would later be found guilty of attempted murder but not criminally responsible due to a mental disorder, had gotten past security at 24 Sussex Drive, the prime minister’s official residence in Ottawa.

Chrétien said his wife, Aline, locked the door and they stood together armed with a statue until police arrived. He said she saved his life.

“She was a great influence on me, and it was (a) very, very good partnership,” he said.

Chrétien told LaFlamme he credits Aline, who died in September 2020, for keeping Canada out of the Iraq War when it began in 2003.

“It was because of her,” he said, explaining that it was his wife who convinced him to run for a third term as prime minister, and he believed other candidates for the job would have bent to immense pressure from the U.S. to join its campaign.

Drawing on a long memory of geopolitical relationships, Chrétien said he feels Canada has lost ground internationally. At this juncture, which he described as the “decline of the American empire,” it’s important to restore relationships across the world, he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2025.

Cassidy McMackon, The Canadian Press