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It’s been a big week for Canada’s famed notwithstanding clause. Quebec is hinting that it might use the clause to protect their new anti-niqab law from a federal court challenge.

And in Saskatchewan’s speech from the throne, outgoing premier Brad Wall again promised to use the clause to override a court order mandating that the provincial government stop paying for non-Catholics to go to Catholic school.

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“We will introduce legislation that will protect the right to school choice by invoking the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” it read.

The notwithstanding clause (section 33 of the Constitution Act) is exactly as strange as it sounds: It’s a magical section of the Canadian constitution that allows provincial governments to simply ignore a key section of the constitution if they don’t like it.

Photo by Canadian Press/Jennifer Graham

The only rule is that the governments have to first announce that they’re doing it. Specifically, they have to stand up in their legislature and announce that they’re going to pass an act “notwithstanding” whatever it says in the constitution.