After a hiatus of nearly four years, the Supreme Court of Canada yesterday applied the reasonableness standard for the first time since Vavilov and the companion case of Canada Post. The decision in Mason v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 SCC 21 (Jamal J for the majority; Côté J concurring) is significant as far as […] Read more

In a previous post, I addressed the relationship between the notwithstanding clause and administrative law. Here I address a number of other relevant issues: the role of Charter values; the principles of judicial review of administrative action; and the relationship between legislation passed notwithstanding Charter rights and existing statutory schemes. Charter Values So much for […] Read more

The ‘notwithstanding’ clause of the Constitution of Canada (contained in s. 33 of the Constitution Act, 1982) provides as follows:  33 (1) Parliament or the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act of Parliament or of the legislature, as the case may be, that the Act or a provision thereof shall operate notwithstanding a […] Read more

I recently highlighted Professor Andrew Green’s paper on the effect — or not! — of Supreme Court of Canada decisions in administrative law. I am happier to report that a new paper published in Canadian Public Administration by David Said comes to the conclusion that the Court’s decisions can be significant: “Navigating entangled terrain: The […] Read more

I have posted a new paper to SSRN, “Administrative Tribunals in Canada: Constitutional Subordinates or Equal Partners“, a chapter in a forthcoming edited collection on Administrative Tribunals in the Common Law World. Here is the abstract: In this Chapter, I explore the tension between two propositions in Canadian public law. On the one hand, administrative […] Read more

Heineken once ran an advertising campaign claiming it was the beer that refreshed the parts other beers cannot. As Ian MacKenzie notes in a kind review of A Culture of Justification: Vavilov and the Future of Administrative Law, I think that the framework for judicial review of administrative action set out in Canada (Minister of […] Read more

The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Canadian Council for Refugees v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 SCC 17 sets out some important principles about challenges to government action at the intersection of constitutional and administrative law. On balance, I think the decision limits the potential for systemic challenges to complex statutory and regulatory regimes […] Read more

The theme for next year’s Administrative Law & Governance Colloquium is “Executive Power”: Executive power has been the site of passionate debate in liberal democracies for many centuries. In recent decades, authority has concentrated in the hands of presidents and prime ministers, with voters increasingly looking to these office holders to give effect to their […] Read more

Acting for the intervener Canadian Telecommunications Association, I filed a factum in the upcoming Yatar appeal at the Supreme Court of Canada this morning. Here is an extract about the constitutional foundations of judicial review. The factum will be available here in due course, along with all the others. It is useful to set out […] Read more

A quick note to congratulate Mark Mancini on reaching 100 issues of his Sunday Evening Administrative Review. The 100th issue features a nice essay by Justice David Stratas on the utility of Mark’s newsletter and the application of the Vavilov framework. Subscribers to the ‘SEAR’ get a weekly digest of important administrative law cases, along […] Read more