The Supreme Court of Canada rejected the Charter challenge against a Quebec law excluding citizens under age 30 from receiving full social security benefits.

Full benefits were only available if the individuals would participate in one of three employability programs: On-the-job Training, Community Work or Remedial Education.

According to the Supreme Court of Canada, the new scheme was based on the philosophy that the most effective way to encourage and enable young people to join the workforce was to make increased benefits conditional on participating in one of three of the workfare programs.

She struggled with psychological problems and drug and alcohol addictions and attempted to work as a cook, waitress, seller and nurses' assistant, among many other jobs.

She was homeless periodically, lived in an unheated apartment for one winter, and when she rented a room at a boarding house, she was left with no money for food.

In applying the analytical framework for section 15 from Law v Canada, McLachlin identified the government purpose was to promote short-term autonomy among youth.

When examining the correspondence between the treatment of the claimant and her actual needs, Bastarache noted that law can differentiate only between groups when there is a genuine difference.

He rejected the assumption that youth receive help from their families more than older people and found there is not enough difference to warrant reducing funding to create such substandard living conditions.

Justice Bastarache concurred with the majority finding that the law did not violate section 7 but offered a different reason for why that was the case: