On January 6, 2017, The Honourable Glenn D. Joyal, Chief Justice of the Court of Queen’s Bench of Manitoba, gave the keynote address at the Canadian Constitution Foundation’s Law and Freedom Conference. The title of this stimulating and eloquent address was “The Charter and Canada’s New Political Culture:  Are We All Ambassadors Now?” Chief Justice Joyal discussed the roots of ...

In a decision issued this week, Trinity Western University v. The Law Society of British Columbia, 2016 BCCA 423, the British Columbia Court of Appeal held that the Law Society acted unreasonably when its benchers, following its members, voted “not to approve” the University’s proposed law school, preventing its graduates from practicing in the province and causing it to lose the ...

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 ...

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. ...

Leonid Sirota has written two excellent articles in response to my essay, “The Case for a Constrained Approach to Section 7.” I am grateful for these pieces, firstly, because Mr. Sirota takes the view that my position is “largely misguided,” meaning that he endorses at least some of my views (though perhaps I am channelling Lloyd Christmas a bit on ...

This is the secondof two articles Mr. Sirota has written in response to Asher Honickman’s essay entitled “The Case for a Constrained Approach to Section 7.”  Mr. Honickman’s reply to follow.  This article was originally published at Double Aspect, Mr. Sirota’s award winning blog.   As I mentioned in my previous post, I would like to respond to a number of points ...

Joanna Baron, Director of the Runnymede Society and member of Advocates for the Rule of Law, was recently interviewed on CBC Radio to discuss the Supreme Court of Canada’s recent decision in R. v. Jordan. In that case, the Court was unanimous in the result, but split 5-4 on the crucial issue of what test the courts ought to apply ...

This is the first of two articles Mr. Sirota has written in response to Asher Honickman’s essay entitled “The Case for a Constrained Approach to Section 7.” The second article will be published shortly, following which Mr. Honickman will publish a reply.   This article was originally published at Double Aspect, Mr. Sirota’s award winning blog.   In a very interesting essay written for ...