A/HRC/41/34/Add.2 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Constitution also prescribes which powers – legislative, executive and judicial – may be exercised by which State organs and how legislative powers are distributed between the Parliament of Canada and the provincial legislatures. The unwritten rules – constitutional principles and conventions – govern the relationship among the State’s entities and condition the exercise of legal powers. 21. While the right to health is not explicitly mentioned in the Charter, many of its provisions may be protected through other rights specified therein, in particular the right to life and security of the person (section 7) and the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination (section 15). 22. Until now, people in Canada have relied on sections 7 and 15 of the Charter to challenge barriers that prevent access to health care based on need and barriers to addressing poverty, homelessness and other significant determinants of health. The Special Rapporteur received information indicating that a common opposing argument to such judicial challenges is the inaccurate assumption that the international human rights obligations of Canada have allegedly no binding legal effect. He stresses that international human rights law presents obligations that States are bound to respect when they become parties to the treaties. 23. In a 2018 decision made under the complaint procedure of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Human Rights Committee stressed that, while the Covenant did not protect the right to health as such, the right to life, could not be properly understood in a restrictive manner and its protection required positive measures by the State.13 The Committee recalled that the right to life extended to reasonably foreseeable threats and life-threatening situations that could result in loss of life. States were therefore obliged to adopt health-related positive measures even if such threats and situations did not result in loss of life. At the minimum, States must provide access to existing health-care services that were reasonably available and accessible when lack of access to health care would expose a person to a reasonably foreseeable risk that could result in loss of life. 24. Finally, the Committee concluded that the denial of health-care coverage to an undocumented migrant under the Interim Federal Health Program for immigrants violated the migrant’s right to life (article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights). It also determined that excluding the subject of the complaint from health-care coverage under the Program on the basis of the subject’s immigration status had been a violation of the right to equality before the law and equal protection of the law without any discrimination (ibid., art. 26). It compelled Canada to provide the subject with an effective remedy, full reparation and adequate compensation and reminded it of its obligation to take all steps necessary to prevent similar violations in the future, including by reviewing its national legislation to ensure that irregular migrants enjoyed access to essential health care to prevent a reasonably foreseeable risk that could result in loss of life. 25. The Special Rapporteur agrees with those conclusions and further notes that, considering that access to essential health care is protected under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights in its articles 6 (on the right to life) and 26 (on the right to equality and non-discrimination), the same should apply in terms of section 7 of the Charter (on the right to life, security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice) and section 15 (on the right to equality before and under the law and to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination). The argument that the Charter imposes no positive obligations to protect the health-related elements of the rights to life, security of the person and equality contravenes the international obligations of Canada. C. National health-care system 26. Canadian health-care systems are firmly rooted in values of equity and fairness and the overall notion that access to health care should be based on need and not on the ability 13 6 See communication No. 2348/2014, Toussaint v. Canada (CCPR/C/123/D/2348/2014), para. 11.3.