Recent Posts

It’s always easy to seek permission when you know you’ll get it. While not required to do so, the Liberals asked the House of Commons to vote recently on whether to ratify the Paris Agreement, an international climate change accord. In contrast, they do not intend to ask Parliament to approve their plan to send 600 soldiers to Africa on a ...

You’re invited to join the University of Toronto Runnymede Society Chapter on Tuesday, October 11th for a debate between two leading Canadian public intellectuals on the currently pending issue of electoral reform! Peter Loewen, School of Public Policy and Governance, will argue that first past the post has proven advantageous in our highly regionalized democracy, we should not be quick to abandon it. ...

I am deeply honoured to have been nominated for Samara’s Everyday Political Citizen, an annual contest that profiles ordinary people working to strengthen their communities and our democracy. This nomination is a reflection of the good work ARL has done over the last two years and I share it with all the ARL members and everyone else who has helped contribute to ...

The Supreme Court of Canada’s freshly released Ledcor Construction Ltd. v. Northbridge Indemnity Insurance Co. provides welcome clarification to contract law generally and insurance law specifically. By holding that appellate courts are to review interpretation of “standard form” contracts on a correctness standard, the court protects the rule of law. The decision should also promote access to civil justice. Background ...

This article appears in the current (Fall 2016) edition of the Christian Legal Journal, a publication of Christian Legal Fellowship, an intervener in Trinity Western University’s litigation in all three provinces.   Any state-imposed limit on a constitutional right or freedom must be “prescribed by law”, according to section 1 of the Charter. This requirement stems from the principle of ...

This summer saw a sharply divided Supreme Court of Canada on many points. The case of Wilson v. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., 2016 SCC 29 illustrated this perhaps better than any other, with the Court issuing four separate opinions. Many issues are raised in the case, from whether certain non-unionized federally regulated employees can be dismissed without cause to the number ...

On July 8, 2016, in R. v. Jordan, 2016 SCC 27, the Supreme Court of Canada overturned its decision in R. v. Morin, [1992] 1 SCR 771. The Court is supposed to be the gatekeeper of the Constitution. However, in R. v. Jordan, it ignored the separation of powers and legislated “ceilings” in establishing whether an accused’s s. 11(b) “right ...

In my last article, “Reaffirming the Case for Constraint“, I replied to Leonid Sirota’s article “How to do Constitutional Adjudication,” which was itself a response to my paper, “The Case for a Constrained Approach to Section 7.” Mr. Sirota also wrote a piece entitled “Seven’s Sins” in response to my original paper. I had intended to reply to “Seven’s Sins” ...

The Summer 2016 edition of Law Matters, a publication of the Canadian Bar Association (Alberta Branch) features two articles penned by members of ARL. Asher Honickman has written a paper entitled “The Case for a Constrained Approach to Section 7,” which discusses section 7’s textual limitations. An slightly modified version of this article was first published on the ARL website. ...

This article is written in response to Asher Honickman’s recent article, “Reaffirming the Case for Constraint.” Mr. Honickman will post a reply to this article shortly, which will also address Mr. Sirota’s comments in a previous response entitled “Seven’s Sins“. This article was originally published at Double Aspect, Mr. Sirota’s award-winning blog. Asher Honickman has posted a reply to my ...