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 ...

There is an uneasy tension at the heart of Canada’s legal system between the inherent conservatism of our legal principles and the inherent liberalism of the actors tasked with applying them. Traditionally, Supreme Court of Canada decisions were final and binding on lower courts. Today, by the courts’ own doing, this bedrock principle is being eroded. Last week, Ontario’s highest ...

This article will appear in the upcoming edition of Law Matters, a publication of the Canadian Bar Association Introduction The consensus in the academic community when it comes to interpreting the Charter is that more is better. There is little debate that the Charter is a “living tree,” such that its meaning must “evolve” over time so that it “accommodates ...

The Alberta Court of Appeal ruled in May in Canada (AG) v. E.F. that a woman suffering from “severe conversion disorder” — a non-terminal, psychiatric condition that causes physical symptoms — was eligible to receive “aid in dying” under the “criteria” stated in the Supreme Court of Canada’s February 2015 decision on physician-assisted dying, known as Carter I. The Attorney ...

The Federal Court of Appeal’s February 8, 2016 decision in Galati v. Harper is notable for several reasons. First, it notes that fundamental legal rules surrounding costs are not jettisoned in the constitutional context. Second, it recognizes that the constitutional guarantee of the “rule of law”, though seemingly broad in the abstract, has a defined meaning and cannot be used ...

In its report released in December, the Provincial-Territorial Expert Advisory Group On Physician-Assisted Dying recommends that assisted suicide and euthanasia be publicly funded and available for the non-terminally ill, the mentally ill, and for minors. Their Report says that its recommendations “were developed in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Carter.” The Report claims, inaccurately, that the Court “did ...

Earlier this year, Canada’s Supreme Court struck down the Criminal Code prohibition on assisted suicide in its landmark Carter v. Canada ruling. Parliament’s only option now, many believe, is either to implement a circumscribed “right to die” or invoke the Charter’s notwithstanding clause. But the actual legal reasoning underlying the Court’s invalidation of the law makes possible another path. The ...