HomeTag Archives: equality

Tag Archives: equality

Deconstructing Section 28

Professor Kerri Froc has written a thoughtful guest post for Double Aspect, in which she argues that s. 28 of the Charter is not merely an interpretive provision, but is rather a substantive and justiciable section in its own right. The implication if she is correct should not be understated. Section 28 states: Notwithstanding anything in this Charter, the rights ...

Read More »

Substantive Equality: Some People are More Equal Than Others

Double Aspect, the law blog of Leonid Sirota and Mark Mancini, recently hosted The 12 Days of Christmas, in which contributors offered their picks for the five worst public law Supreme Court of Canada decisions between 1967 and 2017. My list included Andrews, which I criticized for starting the mess that the Supreme Court has made of section 15(1) of ...

Read More »

In Defence of Substantive Equality

In a guest post on the Double Aspect Blog over the Christmas break, Professor Bruce Pardy (Queen’s Law) picked the Supreme Court’s decision in Andrews as one of the worst decisions since 1967. While I believe Professor Pardy offered some important criticisms of the Court in his post, I must respectfully disagree with his attack on the Andrews decision and ...

Read More »

Reflections on Charter Values: A Call for Judicial Humility

The Honourable Peter D. Lauwers is a Justice of the Court of Appeal for Ontario. This speech was delivered to the Runnymede Society in Toronto on January 12, 2018. It develops further some thoughts on Charter values in my article, “Liberalism and the Challenge of Religious Diversity, (2017), 79 S.C.L.R. (2d) 29. The footnotes have not been edited or completed. ...

Read More »

In Defence of the Notwithstanding Clause and Saskatchewan’s Decision to Use It

Summer is fast approaching and, in keeping with that season’s custom (though not yet a convention), I thought it best to engage Leonid Sirota in constitutional debate. Last year, we went a few rounds on section 7 of the Charter. This year, the hot topic is s.33 of the Charter, otherwise known as the “notwithstanding clause,” which states that Parliament or ...

Read More »

Vriend v Alberta Revisited: A Road to Constitutional or Judicial Supremacy?

The Supreme Court of Canada  has on numerous occasions insisted upon the primacy of the written text of the Constitution.[1] In the Reference Re Secession of Quebec, the Supreme Court explained that the recognition of underlying constitutional principles “could not be taken as an invitation to dispense with the written text of the Constitution”. It noted that “[a] written constitution ...

Read More »

“Intolerant and Illiberal”: The B.C. Court of Appeal is Right to Insist on Tolerance for an Intolerant Institution

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 ...

Read More »

The Right Result for the Wrong Reason: The Court of Appeal’s Decision in Tanudjaja

Last month, the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision in Tanudjaja v. Canada (Attorney General) upheld the Superior Court’s dismissal of a novel claim, alleging that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms confers a positive right to housing. The majority of the Court of Appeal was correct to dismiss the claim. However, the basis of the majority’s decision – that ...

Read More »

A Questionable Ruling on Aboriginal Rights

As has been widely reported, an Ontario court has ruled that native parents have a right to deny their children life-saving medical treatment. The case of Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation v. D.H. concerned an 11-year-old child, J.J., who was diagnosed with leukemia in August 2014. Her treatment team determined that she had a 90%-95% chance of being cured with chemotherapy, ...

Read More »