O’REGAN J and SACHS J .... The Canadian Courts had previously held that the object of the Act was to compel the observance of the Christian Sabbath.” It followed that even if the Lord’s Day Act had come to have the secular effect of providing a common day of rest for all Canadians, its original purpose remained manifest in the continuing signals it sent out to the effect that the Christian Sabbath was entitled to receive special recognition from the state. As such the legislation had a clearly unconstitutional purpose and the statute could not avoid constitutional invalidity. [107] The appellants argued that the purpose of the Sexual Offences Act, as explicitly declared by those responsible for its adoption, was simply to enforce what the legislator regarded as the morality of the people, and to see to it that the law should uphold one particular moral position, namely that sex outside of marriage should be prohibited. [108] For the purpose of argument we will accept that, given the context in which the Act was amended, the objective of Parliament in 1988 was, as the appellants contend, to enforce a particular conception of morality on the whole of society. The question then arises whether the legislation must be regarded as having been saddled once and for all with this illegitimate purpose, or whether it can be regarded as having assumed a new purpose that would be legitimate and justifiable in an open and democratic society. [109] Counsel for the appellants argued that the purpose of the legislation is established once and for all at the time of its adoption, and that only subsequent legislative amendment can change 73