In the wake of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Vavilov, I’ve decided to pick up a copy of A.V. Dicey’s Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution. I had read passages from this book more than a decade ago when I was in law school, but very little since beyond the odd paragraph. Dicey’s book is valuable primarily as a historical work. It lays ...

– ubi jus est aut vagum aut incertum, ibi maxima servitus prevalebit – On April 13, 2017, the Liberals introduced a long-awaited marijuana legalization law, Bill C-45, officially titled “An Act respecting cannabis and to amend the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Criminal Code and other Acts.” The bill has now passed the House of Commons and is currently ...

I.     WHAT IS A CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT? It has been said that Constitutions are a “mirror reflecting the national soul”[1].  While these comments were made before the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Charter) came into effect, there is no reason to believe that the Charter, which focusses on a guaranteed set of civil liberties (Charter rights), should be any less ...

The federal government has officially announced that it is bringing back the Court Challenges  Program, which provides money to individuals or groups who pursue litigation in which they assert certain constitutional or quasi-constitutional rights. In comparison with past iterations, the program will subsidize claims based on a broader range of rights ― not only equality and language rights under the ...

It’s always easy to seek permission when you know you’ll get it. While not required to do so, the Liberals asked the House of Commons to vote recently on whether to ratify the Paris Agreement, an international climate change accord. In contrast, they do not intend to ask Parliament to approve their plan to send 600 soldiers to Africa on a ...

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 ...

It took all of us by surprise, but Brexit is putatively happening. The leader of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker aptly deadpanned: Brexit would not be “an amicable divorce”, but “it wasn’t exactly a tight romance to begin with.” A slender democratic majority of UK residents (including foreign residents- well done, civic rights) voted on June 23rd to exit the ...

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 ...