A few weeks ago I appeared before the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs about the proposed modifications to the Supreme Court Act. You can watch the hearing here (warning, quicker to stream than to download). I prepared lengthy written submissions, which you can download here. These modifications are, of course, the subject […] Read more

I made a presentation last week to the members of the new Refugee Appeal Division and their legal advisers. The RAD hears appeals from the Refugee Protection Division: most of the relevant statutory provisions are contained in Part IV of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. One of the questions the members of the RAD […] Read more

There is an interesting piece over at the RegBlog on agency capture and review by America’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs of agency inaction. Michael Livermore and Richard Revesz argue that agency failures to act may well result from agency capture and may be as damaging as inefficient agency action resulting from capture. Accordingly, […] Read more

Ronald Dworkin gave a good example to illustrate what he called “strong” and “weak” discretion. Imagine a sergeant A who is told to pick “any five men” for a mission. Contrast her with a sergeant B told to pick “the five most experienced men”. One has strong discretion, the other weak.Dworkin’s purposes were not those […] Read more

The Supreme Court of Canada released a fascinating administrative law decision this morning: McLean v. British Columbia (Securities Commission), 2013 SCC 67. The majority reasons were written by Moldaver J.; Karakatsanis J. wrote a set of concurring reasons.The facts are straightforward. M entered into a settlement agreement with the Ontario Securities Commission in 2008, in […] Read more

I have been bothered for about a month now by a hypothetical question I received from an audience member at a talk I gave at the end of October. I was explaining some cases which hold either (a) that plainly inadequate reasons make a decision unreasonable or (b) the absence of sufficient reasons makes a […] Read more

There is an interesting new paper by Yehonatan Givati called “Game Theory and the Structure of Administrative Law“, interesting principally because of its focus on advance ruling and licensing rather than the well-known distinction between adjudication and rulemaking. Here is the abstract: How should administrative agencies choose among the different policymaking instruments at their disposal? […] Read more

In Zenner v. Prince Edward Island College of Optometrists, [2005] 3 SCR 645, one of the conditions imposed by his professional body on an optometrist who had lost his licence was that he complete an accredited medical ethics or optometrist course. The problem was that, at the time, the College had not accredited any such […] Read more

The Supreme Court of Canada had not addressed a challenge to the vires of delegated legislation since reformulating the framework for judicial review of administrative action in Dunsmuir until today’s decision in Katz Group Canada Inc. v. Ontario (Health and Long-Term Care), 2013 SCC 64. A good summary is available here.The Court took a classical […] Read more

The comments of Evans J.A. in Qin v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2013 FCA 263 are obiter, strictly speaking, but they are comments by Evans J.A. and will carry a great deal of weight.There are two important aspects to Evans J.A.’s formulation of the rules for judicial review of administrative interpretations of law. First, where […] Read more