Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney arrives to an event in Ottawa on Tuesday. iPolitics/Matthew Usherwood

Canada has a “problem” when a provincial premier can overrule the country’s courts, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney said Tuesday.

In Ottawa for a fireside chat with Canada’s chief librarian, he was asked by an audience member about Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s decision Monday to invoke the notwithstanding clause after a Superior Court judge shut down his administration’s effort to slash the size of Toronto’s City Council.

Mulroney’s daughter, Caroline, is Ontario’s attorney general. The notwithstanding clause allows a government to enact a law even if it violates certain Charter rights. It has never before been used in Ontario and only rarely elsewhere.

Mulroney wouldn’t comment on the current situation unfolding in Ontario, but said the country needs courts that are independent.

“For me, the backbone of our democracy, the strength of our democracy is the independence and confidence of the court system in Canada. We have one that would rival any in the world,” he told attendees.

He also said he has never been a “big fan” of the clause.

“How the hell did this thing get in our Constitution,” Mulroney mused.

Speaking to reporters afterwards, Mulroney said he had not spoken to his daughter about Ontario’s decision to invoke the notwithstanding clause.

The clause is part of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Constitution signed by the federal government and all provinces, except Quebec, in 1982 by then Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau.

The clause is “not evil,” he said, insisting if it were, Trudeau would not have let it be included. “If it’s part of the package, it’s not anti-democratic to use it, to invoke it if you’re the elected premier of a given province,” he said.

Mulroney said his views around the notwithstanding clause are well known. When asked, he said he never considered invoking the clause when he was prime minister.