Systemic discrimination is legal in Canada. It’s just not the systemic discrimination most people talk about.
The entirely legal forms of systemic discrimination are the so-called “ameliorative programs” meant to help those whom the Charter calls “disadvantaged groups.”
The case that’s always been made for this kind of “affirmative action” — the friendly word for “progressive” discrimination — is that it’s meant to fix a historic and ongoing problem. Certain groups have suffered discrimination and this has led to a whole host of negative outcomes, everything from under-representation in certain jobs among the well-to-do and over-representation in less pleasant outcomes in regards to criminal justice, poverty and educational failure.
