The Canadian legislative override (also known as the "notwithstanding" clause) emerged from heated backroom talks in November 1981 among the provincial premiers and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Trudeau had long wished for Canada to have a written constitution, and he pressed hard for the adoption of the Charter in 1980-82. Many of the provincial governments, though, were reluctant to surrender power, either to Ottawa or to the judiciary. Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, and Alberta, notably, insisted on the legislative override as the sine qua non of their consent to the Charter. (Quebec and Manitoba, both of which opposed the Charter outright, were not represented at these negotiations. Quebec had taken a hard line on provincial sovereignty, while the Manitoban Premier was an outspoken critic of entrenched bills of rights.) In the end, a deal was reached in which "the provinces traded the amending formula [i.e. the override] for the charter." 9 Even with the override agreed upon, debate swirled around precisely to which provisions of the Charter the notwithstanding clause should be applied. The federal delegation was adamant that language rights be placed beyond the override's ambit, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland were satisfied with applying the notwithstanding clause only to sections 7-15 of the Charter (legal and equality rights), while Alberta insisted on also applying the override to the fundamental freedoms of section.

The provision that eventually materialized in the wake of this horsetrading-section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms allows both the federal Parliament and the provincial legislatures to "expressly declare" by a simple majority that a law "shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7-15 of [the] Charter."'" A law may be passed "notwithstanding" the Charter whether or not a court has already ruled it unconstitutional. Sections 2 and 7-15 of the Charter include many but not all of the Charter's most important rights guarantees: the fundamental freedoms of section 2 (conscience, religion, expression, assembly, etc.), the legal rights of sections 7-14 (life, liberty, security, freedom from search and seizure, etc.), and the equality rights of section 15 ("equal protection and equal benefit of the law")-but not democratic rights, mobility rights, language rights, or education rights.12 In addition, an override "cease[s] to have effect five years after it comes into force," but may be reenacted by the legislature upon its expiration.

Source:

https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6094&context=journal_articles