Between Exclusion and Assimilation: Experimentalizing Multiculturalism (Canada‪)‬

With increasing frequency, members of cultural minorities are demanding not only equality and nondiscrimination as individuals, but also the legal recognition of their collective identities. Their claims to cultural protection and accommodation are necessarily philosophical, political, moral, and (both constitutionally and normatively) legal. This paper is a reflection on the last dimension, the legal axis. The author sets out to delineate the descriptive, interpretive, and normative scope of section 27 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He is influenced by the approaches to constitutional innovation expounded by theories of democratic experimentalism. The first part of the paper outlines the textual and normative framework of the Charter's multiculturalism provision. Section 27 creates two distinct types of interests that give rise to claims: one individual and one group-based, described respectively as "accommodation" and "autonomy".