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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

The Supreme Court of Canada has granted leave to appeal in a British Columbia decision involving the right to physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. In Carter v Canada (Attorney General), a terminally ill British Columbia resident sought to declare the provisions of the Criminal Code which prohibit physician-assisted dying. The concepts of “physician-assisted suicide” and “euthanasia” are not identical. Physician-assisted suicide ...