ABSTRACT

The insensitivities to cultural difference that interest the author operate at various levels in constitutional legal analysis. The most obvious insensitivity is found in the text of the constitution, but there is a constellation of insensitivities and understandings which underlies the framing of the debate over social and economic power or cultural accommodation as a debate about rights. For an outside critic of the constitutional structure, there is the evident problem of using the 'master's' language and conceptual apparatus to dismantle the 'master's' house. The whole fabric of rights discourse constitutes the more subtle level at which the undifferentiated legal framework displays its cultural imagery. The struggle over the division of social, political, and economic power in Canadian society has been formulated by the Charter as a set of rights claims or as a dispute over rights in order to give it constitutional currency.