The imbroglio with the Ontario legislature’s enactment of Bill 5 to restructure the Toronto City Council a couple of months before an upcoming election, the Superior Court’s declaration of that legislation unconstitutional, the threatened invocation of the “notwithstanding clause” to override that declaration, and the Court of Appeal’s restoration of what little sanity could still be restored by reversing the Superior ...

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 Article was published in the Autumn 2014 edition of the Advocates’ Quarterly1   Eighty-five years ago this October, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council handed down its decision in Edwards v. Attorney-General for Canada, in which it held that “The British North America Act planted in Canada a living tree capable of growth and expansion within its natural ...