The recommendation of the Commons ''Save Meech'' committee that first ministers formally endorse Senator Lowell Murray's oft-stated defence of the ''distinct society'' clause - that it ''works with the Charter, not against it'' - does not, as advertised, safeguard Charter rights in Quebec. It is an empty assurance, designed to provide cover for a climbdown by the dissident premiers.

There is reason to doubt, first, how much weight a mere resolution of first ministers, which has no legal standing, would carry in judicial interpretation of the clause. And certainly Murray's professed belief that the clause will be used merely as a guide in interpreting the Charter through Section 1 - the ''reasonable limits'' clause - is just that: a belief.

For this we have only previous jurisprudence indicating the court would tend to see constitutional additions, unless explicitly stated otherwise, as being ''embedded'' in the existing constitutional structure, rather than simply overriding any clauses with which they come into conflict by virtue of having been passed afterward. But if Murray is wrong, we're stuck with it.

Even if he's right, moreover, this does not leave the Charter intact. The point that must be made is that the courts are already using the ''reasonable limits'' clause to punch holes in the Charter. Section 1 is indeed a far greater threat to Charter rights than the more notorious ''notwithstanding'' clause. After Bill 178, this has become the atomic bomb of constitutional politics, so powerful it is almost useless.

By contrast, Section 1 allows the courts to undermine the Charter in far less spectacular fashion, a case at a time. As a bencher from another Supreme Court in another time, Justice Louis Brandeis, reminded us, liberty is lost not typically at one go, but through ''insidious encroachment by men of zeal.'' Opponents of the Charter fret over judicial activism in applying such a law. But if you really want to see judicial activism, try handing judges the power to ignore the law.

Some sort of clause like this is probably inevitable. Otherwise, runs the standard argument, a court that was determined to override Charter freedoms would have to resort to absurd definitions of ''speech'' and whatnot. It seems to me that forcing judges to make ridiculous arguments to subvert the Charter is a virtue. Section 1, on the contrary, allows them to cloak such efforts in ''reasonableness.''

But if ''reasonable limits'' are to be included, the definition of what is reasonable ought to be severely circumscribed. For a time it was: the Regina vs Oakes ruling set out strict conditions to be met. But since then, the rules have been stretched and tugged and more or less abandoned. What is ''reasonable'' now seems to depend solely on whatever personal ideological pets the judges in any given case may keep.

TWO DEFENCES

Instructing judges that Quebec's status as a ''distinct society'' should be one of these does not help matters. Set against this, Meech advocates offer two defences. One, a similar interpretive clause in the 1982 Constitution refers to Canada's ''multicultural heritage,'' and as Murray says, ''has not resulted in anyone's rights being taken away.''

Well, yes it has: I can think of at least one case in an Ontario court upholding the law against hate literature on this basis. In any case, there is no government anywhere in Canada that takes as its mission, indeed is expressly directed by the Constitution, to use this clause in the way Quebec is enjoined to ''preserve and promote'' the ''distinct society.''

Two, we are told, the courts already take Quebec's distinct character into account in interpreting the Charter. The ''distinct society'' clause would simply require in law what is practice in fact. One has only to ask, in reply, how the court would decide the famous case of Quebec's sign laws in the presence of this constitutional admonition. In the existing ruling, the court indeed bent over backward to accommodate Quebec's special linguistic concerns. This, as we know, was not enough for the government of Quebec.

A future court must surely wonder why, if the intent was merely to ratify the status quo, the framers of Meech Lake did not place the ''distinct society'' in the preamble to the Constitution, which is where such things are usually recognized. That they deliberately chose not to must mean they intended the clause to have additional interpretive force - even if only through Section 1 - the status quo having proved inadequate. A first ministers' statement, however soothing, would not affect this.