The head of Québec’s Régie du logement was accused several years ago of playing fast and loose with statistics. He is alleged to have ordered that more recent cases be treated more quickly — to the detriment of older files in the system — in order to show the authority’s performance in a better light. […] Read more

The Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly said since Dunsmuir that there is a category of ‘true’ questions of jurisdiction. When responding to these questions administrative decision-makers must answer correctly, or face substitution of judicial judgment by the courts. However, the Court has yet to identify a ‘true’ question of jurisdiction. This is not terribly […] Read more

An American visitor to Montreal recently asked me “What is the ‘record’ for judicial review in Canada?” I chuckled, said “It depends” and directed her to paragraph 48 of Dunsmuir. In Saskatchewan (Energy and Resources) v Areva Resources Canada Inc, 2013 SKCA 79 (which I have already blogged about here), the Ministry did not offer […] Read more

A recurring issue in the law of judicial review is the distinction between law and discretion. Where this matters the most is in substantive review: should a similar standard of reasonableness be applied to questions of law and exercises of discretion? The Supreme Court of Canada has been sceptical of attempts to distinguish between the […] Read more

Professor Paul Craig has posted “The Nature of Reasonableness Review” on SSRN. Here is the abstract: While there is a voluminous literature on proportionality, there is considerably less on reasonableness as a test for judicial review of discretionary determinations. This paper examines the nature of reasonableness as a test for judicial review of discretion in […] Read more

We have all been there. A vital transaction needs to be made (think course registration, ticket purchase, visa payment) but, as you sit there drumming your fingers impatiently on the table, you are greeted with the message: “Our System is Currently Unavailable”. Now imagine that you wanted to access the system in order to re-register […] Read more

Big news in Québec at the moment is the attempt to remove the embattled mayor of Saint-Rémi. New legislation provides that elected municipal officials charged with certain criminal offences may be removed from office by a Superior Court judge. The judge has discretion in determining whether to remove the individual, which is a marked (and […] Read more

I have always been a bit dubious about claims that administrative law is becoming increasingly rights-based. Whether it should undergo a reorientation is a different question, of course, but it is difficult to discern a demonstrable pattern towards a markedly new approach to judicial review. Jason Varuhas makes this clear in “The Reformation of English […] Read more

There are some interesting snippets in this morning’s Supreme Court of Canada decision in Marine Services International Ltd. v. Ryan Estate, 2013 SCC 44 on the nature of workers’ compensation statutes and their relationship to the law of tort.The issue for the Court was whether the statutory bar created by a provincial workers’ comp scheme […] Read more

In my two earlier posts on the “third source” (here and here) I discussed the appropriate test for classifying government powers and whether they could be treated as arising from statute (as, on a generous reading, Lord Sumption suggested in R. (New London College Ltd.) v. Home Secretary, [2013] UKSC 51. In this post, I […] Read more