Advocates for the Rule of Law

Back in 2008, the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario (CPSO) issued a new policy entitled “Physicians and the Ontario Human Rights Code.” That policy informed physicians that they should be prepared to “set aside their personal beliefs” in providing healthcare. It warned that the Human Rights Code has no defence for discriminatory refusals of medical services, “even if the refusal is ...

“Are great public problems best addressed through institutions designed to apply the explicit technical knowledge of experts or by those designed to channel the implicit social knowledge of the community?”[1] Since the enactment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Canada has experienced a remarkable shift from the latter forum to the former—namely, from legislature to courtroom.[2] Not only has ...

In a decision delivered in April 2018, a Newfoundland court recognized three legal parents (two fathers and one mother), based on the throuple’s sexual relationship  The case starts with a Newfoundland throuple—two men and a woman in a sexual relationship—who had a child in 2017.[1] The identity of the mother is clear, both biologically and in law. However, the men could ...

The Supreme Court of Canada released its judgement in the Wall appeal last week. It’s a victory for clarity in what had become quite a confused case.  The Court, overturning both courts below, ruled that judges do not have authority to review the decision of an unincorporated religious body to expel one of its members. Confusion at the lower courts Randy Wall, the ...

How should the objective of a criminal prohibition be determined for the purpose of substantive review under section 7 of the Charter? I’m grateful that my attempt to answer that question will be published in a special edition of the Supreme Court Law Review. In my paper, I argue that the Supreme Court in Carter (2015) struck down the prohibition on assisted suicide based on ...

Is it “antithetical” to the “Charter value” of “inclusivity” to allow a child to be excused from a public school classroom while sexual orientation or gender is being discussed? In this article I review a case that raises this very question. Many lawyers today are concerned that “Charter values” are being used as a sword for state-enforced moral conformity, when ...

This summer, the Ontario government conducted consultations regarding its plan to enact “safe access zones legislation” (SAZL) modeled on British Columbia’s. I’ll give a brief background on B.C.’s law before diving into a division of powers argument against enacting such a law in Ontario. In short, I will argue that just as a province cannot enact a penal prohibition on ...

Ontario Court of Appeal Justices Miller and Lauwers recently critiqued the nebulous concept of “Charter values” in a written judgement and urged judges to avoid invoking Charter values as much as possible. The case, in Gehl v Canada (AG), 2017 ONCA 319, is worth reading, but I’ll summarize it for you here. The issue in Gehl was whether the appellant, ...

Can a matter of church discipline be appealed from a church to a court? The question has made its way up to the Supreme Court of Canada in Wall v Judicial Committee of the Highwood Congregation of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It may surprise you that it was answered in the affirmative by the chambers judge, Justice Wilson, and by a majority ...

This article appears in the current (Fall 2016) edition of the Christian Legal Journal, a publication of Christian Legal Fellowship, an intervener in Trinity Western University’s litigation in all three provinces.   Any state-imposed limit on a constitutional right or freedom must be “prescribed by law”, according to section 1 of the Charter. This requirement stems from the principle of ...