SUPREME COURT OF CANADA CITATION: Alberta v. Hutterian ...

scope of the Charter guarantee. Much of the regulation of a modern state could be claimed byvarious individuals to have a more than trivial impact on a sincerely held religious belief. Givingeffect to each of their religious claims could seriously undermine the universality of many regulatoryprograms, including the attempt to reduce abuse of driver’s licences at issue here, to the overalldetriment of the community.[37] If the choice the legislature has made is challenged as unconstitutional, it falls to thecourts to determine whether the choice falls within a range of reasonable alternatives. Section 1 ofthe Charter does not demand that the limit on the right be perfectly calibrated, judged in hindsight,but only that it be “reasonable” and “demonstrably justified”. Where a complex regulatory responseto a social problem is challenged, courts will generally take a more deferential posture throughoutthe s. 1 analysis than they will when the impugned measure is a penal statute directly threateningthe liberty of the accused. Courts recognize that the issue of identity theft is a social problem thathas grown exponentially in terms of cost to the community since photo licences were introduced inAlberta in 1974, as reflected in the government’s attempt to tighten the scheme when it discontinuedthe religious exemption in 2003. The bar of constitutionality must not be set so high that responsible,creative solutions to difficult problems would be threatened. A degree of deference is thereforeappropriate: Edwards Books, at pp. 781-82, per Dickson C.J., and Canada (Attorney General) v.JTI-Macdonald Corp., 2007 SCC 30, [2007] 2 S.C.R. 610, at para. 43, per McLachlin C.J.[38] With this in mind, I turn to the question of whether the limit on freedom of religionraised in this case has been shown to be justified under s. 1 of the Charter.(a) Is the Limit Prescribed by Law?