In a previous post I described the procedural flexibility of administrative tribunals (having, before that, outlined the variety of functions administrative tribunals can play). In this post I describe the structural variability of administrative tribunals. The starting point is that each administrative tribunal is a discrete statutory creation, with its own legislative mandate and suite […] Read more

In an ill-fated police operation in 2015, Officer W80 shot Jermaine Baker dead. Baker was suspected of involvement in a plot to free an accused from police custody. At the time of the police operation, Baker and two other men were in a parked car, with fogged-up windows, when the vehicle was approached by W80 […] Read more

It has been said that administrative tribunals are like Cleopatra: age cannot wither them, nor stale their infinite variety.[1] This is certainly true of Canada. A variety of adjudicative bodies can be grouped under the heading of administrative tribunals, their procedures and structures vary significantly from province to province, and the regimes for appointment and […] Read more

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming article “The Doré Duty: Fundamental Rights in Public Administration“, to appear shortly in the Canadian Bar Review. The Doré duty is about Charter values, not Charter rights. The Supreme Court stated in Loyola High School v Quebec (Attorney General) that the trigger for the duty is an administrative […] Read more

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming article “The Doré Duty: Fundamental Rights in Public Administration“, to appear shortly in the Canadian Bar Review. The Doré duty is a procedural duty. A procedural duty imposes obligations on administrative decision-makers to do certain things prior to making a decision. The source for a procedural duty can […] Read more

An administrative tribunal can have adversarial, inquisitorial, regulatory or mediative functions, or any mix of these four. Sometimes a tribunal is adversarial, with two parties pitted against each other. The classic example in Canadian law is the labour relations tribunal, featuring employers on one side and employees on the other. Another familiar example is the […] Read more

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming article “The Doré Duty: Fundamental Rights in Public Administration“, to appear shortly in the Canadian Bar Review. A persistent concern about Charter values is that they are amorphous and ill-defined.[1] This concern has sometimes animated arguments that Doré leads to under-powered judicial review of Charter-infringing state action. This […] Read more

In a previous post I expressed some scepticism about the distinction between express and implied statutory powers. In this post I suggest that the distinction should be jettisoned in favour of a focus on statutory interpretation, using the ordinary tools of text, purpose and context. In terms of the importance of text, it is useful […] Read more

I recently had the considerable privilege of serving as amicus curiae to the Federal Court of Appeal in a fascinating, complex and controversial case about broadcasting regulation and free speech: Société Radio-Canada v. Canada (Attorney General), 2023 FCA 131. In a majority decision, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission found that Radio Canada had breached […] Read more

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming article “The Doré Duty: Fundamental Rights in Public Administration“, to appear shortly in the Canadian Bar Review. There are two aspects to the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Doré v Barreau du Québec:[1] the decision imposes a framework for judicial review of administrative action infringing […] Read more