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time period, finally accelerating with moves towards relationship recognition and same sex
marriage in the late nineties and early 2000s.
Lawyers (especially young lesbian and gay lawyers) were in the vanguard of the move
to deploy the Charter on behalf of lesbian and gay rights. Even when other forms of lesbian
and gay organizing were stalled, informal networks of legal activism began to form around
the Charter. In the late eighties, lawyers began networking through the Canadian Bar
Association, the National Association of Women and the Law and the Women’s Legal
Education and Action Fund. Several legal conferences in the early nineties such as Outrights
in BC, and the National Conference on Sexual Orientation Law at Queen’s University drew
together younger lawyers in the sexual orientation field, including those who would become
major figures in Charter litigation in the later nineties (findlay,
5
1996). Over time, this
network has been formalized into the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Conference of
the Canadian Bar Association. Many of the lawyers who have represented litigants in sexual
orientation litigation were closely involved in building these networks (Elliott, 2002; K.
Smith, 2002; findlay, 1996).
The most important section of the Charter for lesbian and gay rights, section 15
(equality rights), came into effect in 1985, three years after the entrenchment of the Charter
itself. The three-year delay had been provided to give governments time to bring their
legislation into line with the new provisions. In 1985, the Progressive Conservative
government of Brian Mulroney appointed a parliamentary committee to consider the
implications of the new equality rights provisions. The parliamentary committee hearings
drew a large number of submissions from local lesbian and gay groups (Johnston, 1985) and
galvanized a group of lawyers and trade union activists to form an Ottawa-based group
which would keep up the pressure on the federal government with regard to lesbian and gay
Convention