Quebec’s Charbonneau Commission is continuing to make headlines. Most recently, the testimony of Ken Pereira, a former trade union activist, is keeping the printing presses tipping over. The Commission registered an important victory earlier this week before the Superior Court on a question of procedural fairness: Beaulieu c. Charbonneau, 2013 QCCS 4629.One of the witnesses […] Read more

Mark Elliott has a very interesting post on substantive review on the UK Constitutional Law Blog. Here are some choice extracts, with some highlighting: A better starting point, I think, is another insight offered by Taggart, according to which public law is increasingly about the enforcement of a “culture of justification”… Against this background, several […] Read more

Public Service Alliance of Canada v. Canada (Attorney General), 2013 FC 91 is an illuminating case on many issues, especially procedural fairness.  At issue was a labour relations dispute between the federal government and one of its agencies. The bone of contention was a direction by the Minister for Canadian Heritage that a group of […] Read more

With Justice Morris Fish’s retirement, the federal government must appoint a new judge from the province of Québec to the Supreme Court of Canada. A shortlist of three names is lying on the Prime Minister’s desk. Among them is thought to be Justice Bich of the Québec Court of Appeal. I spoke with the Globe […] Read more

Audrey Macklin sent on some perceptive, though critical, comments on my post on last week’s Supreme Court of Canada decision in Divito. She kindly allowed me to share them: 1. I agree with your preference for the minority view on the breach of s. 6(1). If you are right that an inchoate appeal to positive/negative […] Read more

In Divito v. Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2013 SCC 47, handed down yesterday, the Supreme Court of Canada was unanimous in upholding the International Transfer of Offenders Act against (a long-shot) constitutional challenge. But the judges mapped out two different routes to that conclusion, evidence I think of difficulty in tracing the contours […] Read more

Where disclosure of documents would be detrimental to the public interest, courts have the power to refuse it (see e.g. here). So-called public interest immunity is a hugely important topic, especially where the powers of public bodies are concerned. The issue very recently divided a very strong bench of the Federal Court of Appeal in […] Read more

I have posted previously about the Irish courts’ preference for a narrow approach to judicial review of administrative action. Another recent example is Walsh v. Revington, [2013] IEHC 408. This time, the judgment is useful as a means of throwing into contrast formal and deferential approaches to judicial review. A Canadian court, I suspect, would […] Read more

The Supreme Court of Canada has granted leave in National Gallery of Canada v. Canadian Artists’ Representation, 2013 FCA 64. This has the potential to be a very interesting administrative law case. I think that the majority of the Federal Court of Appeal was wrong and hope that the Supreme Court will favour the approach […] Read more

I don’t want to add too much to the hubbub about the Charter of Values that Québec’s nationalist minority government ‘unveiled‘ yesterday. The basic idea is that religious neutrality is to be required in the public sphere (but there are numerous exceptions). I have a couple of administrative-law-related points.One thing that drew my attention yesterday […] Read more