The New Brunswick Court of Appeal will hear the Crown’s appeal in R. v. Comeau this coming month. The issue for appeal is whether Justice LeBlanc of the New Brunswick Provincial Court got it right in finding that s.121 of the Constitution Act, 1867 prohibits both tariff and non-tariff barriers between the provinces, overturning the Supreme Court of Canada’s precedent ...

Marijuana legalization has officially been announced by Health Minister Jane Philpott for spring of 2017 and the expected outcome, for now at least, is a federally-led initiative. This is the case because section 91(27) of the Constitution Act, 1867 provides Parliament with the power to legislate on issues coming within the purview of the criminal law. That said, if Parliament’s goal is to make marijuana accessible and remove it from the Controlled Drugs ...

Hate speech is back in the news. The Quebec government has recently tabled Bill 59, which, among other things, would prohibit “hate speech” – a term that is not defined. Anyone who “engages in or disseminates” hate speech is liable to be fined up to $10,000 for the first utterance and $20,000 for the second.   The Bill would also ...

The Supreme Court of Canada’s March 27, 2015 decision in Quebec (Attorney General) v. Canada (Attorney General) is an exemplary judgment in upholding the rule of law in the realm of federalism. The majority’s decision explicitly (and refreshingly) recognized that the constitution’s text is the primary source of its meaning, while also explicitly recognizing that courts are not to review ...

The recent Supreme Court decision in Bank of Montreal v. Marcotte, 2014 SCC 55, is a helpful clarification of the applicability of consumer protection legislation and, more generally, the current principles regulating the separation of federal and provincial powers in Canada. At issue in Marcotte were charges imposed on credit card customers for purchases in foreign currency. Such purchases are ...