Having worked at the tribunal coalface for many years, Ron Ellis is very well placed to comment on the independence of Canada’s administrative tribunals. In Unjust by Design, he eviscerates the current system and draws out a road map for reform. The book is fascinating and well worth reading in full. I will limit myself […] Read more

When I was on the job talk circuit a couple of years ago, an eminent professor confessed that s/he had only half paid attention to my presentation, noting that s/he had stopped paying attention to Canadian administrative law about 20 years ago and was satisfied that s/he had missed nothing: “Obviously you are having the […] Read more

I have posted before about the standard of review where an administrative decision-maker reviews another decision-maker: see especially here and also here and here. There are two important matters, in my view. First, the appellate administrative decision-maker is not limited to a choice between a full de novo hearing and a judicial-review type proceeding: there […] Read more

At last! From the Quebec Court of Appeal, a plausible contender for a general question of law of central importance to the legal system (which, in Canada, is a type of question reserved for the courts and not administrative decision-makers). In Association des pompiers professionnels de Québec inc. c. Québec (Ville de), 2013 QCCA 208, […] Read more

In a recent American case, Carter v. Welles-Bowen Realty, Inc, the question arose whether the rule that ambiguous penal statutes are to be construed in favour of defendants (the “rule of lenity”) could ‘trump’ the rule that courts are to defer to administrative interpretations of ambiguous statutes (Chevron deference).At issue was a regulatory provision preventing […] Read more

Although I had not planned to reach a staging post by this time of the year, the happy coincidence of year-end and post #250 gives me a chance to reflect on my blawging enterprise. Why Blawg?I was pleasantly surprised to find a large gap in the blawg market: there was no sustained commentary dedicated to […] Read more

The topic of enforcement discretion is the subject of an interesting series of posts by Zachary Price over at the Volokh Conspiracy. The impetus for Price’s series and his underlying article (“Enforcement Discretion and Executive Duty“) comes from several recent American episodes, such as President Obama’s decision not to enforce certain provisions of the Affordable […] Read more

The applicant in Setia v. Appleby College, 2013 ONCA 753 was expelled from a private school for smoking pot.The school had a Code of Conduct which provides that smoking or drug possession may result in expulsion and a Lighting of Substances policy which provides for automatic expulsion. The Code also provided, however, for procedural protections, […] Read more

There was a long piece in the New York Times last week about Britain’s eager adoption of the approach to regulation and law reform set out by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein in Nudge: Britain’s Ministry of Nudges. Here is an extract: It is an American idea, refined in American universities and popularized in 2008 […] Read more

This morning’s Supreme Court of Canada decision in AIC Limited v. Fischer, 2013 SCC 69 involved an application of the “preferable procedure” test for certification of class actions to a case in which the Ontario Securities Commission reached a settlement with mutual fund managers about the controversial practice of “market timing“. The question for the […] Read more