Author Archives: artgrant

A Tale of Two Cases: the Long Gun Registry case, Quebec (Attorney General) v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 14 and the Mandatory Minimum Sentence for Prohibited Firearms Case, R. v. Nur, 2015 SCC 15

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By a 5 to 4 margin, in Quebec (Attorney General) v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 14 (referred to as the Long Gun Registry case in this post), the Supreme Court of Canada ruled on March 27, 2015 that the Quebec government had no right to insist that, before destroying all data in the now defunct federal long gun registry, the federal government hand over to it the data relating to Quebec resident long gun owners. Two and a half weeks later, by a 6 to 3 margin, in R. v. Nur, 2015 SCC 15, the Court held that the mandatory minimum sentence for possessing prohibited firearms was contrary to s. 12 of the Charter and was not justified under s. 1. What is of interest, besides the result in these two cases, is how the Court divided and the basis for its division.
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A mediated collision between freedom of religion and state secularism: Loyola High School v. Quebec (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 12

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[Photo of religious educators in pre-Quiet Revolution Quebec]

Yet again, the Supreme Court of Canada wrestled with the thorny issue caused by the intersection of religious freedom and the secular state. In Loyola High School v. Quebec (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 12, the Court conceded some measure of victory to both sides of the equation. In a 4:3 majority decision, Justice Abella (LeBel, Cromwell and Karakatsanis JJ concurring) held that a private denominational school could be required to teach a state prescribed curriculum on world religions, religious cultures and their respective religious ethics from a neutral and secular perspective with the exception of the school’s own denomination. For that particular religion (here, Catholicism), the school was entitled to an exemption to teach its students from a Catholic perspective, an exemption that the provincial Minister had refused to provide.

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Senate Reform in Canada – Going Boldly Where No Senate Has Gone Before?

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This weekend, I had the pleasure of attending a conference at the Centre for Constitutional Studies at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta. The conference was entitled “Time for Boldness on Senate Reform”. Its opening speaker was the Right Honourable Kim Campbell, former prime minister of Canada. She delivered a thoughtful review of her experience both as a minister under Brian Mulroney’s government and as prime minister and her recollections about how the Senate had acted in response to both the Progressive Conservative’s government’s proposal for free trade with the United States and to the Mulroney government’s later proposal for the Goods and Services Tax (“GST”). The conference ended with the eminent professor and scholar Roger Gibbins reviewing the results of the various speakers and summarizing his experience at the conference. Professor Gibbins asked himself two questions. First, he asked whether the conference participants had been successful in living up to the conference’s : were they “bold” in their suggestions for Senate reform. He answered that question with a “No”. Then, he asked whether he learned whether Canada had to be bold in reforming the Senate. To that, he responded “Yes”.

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How technology and freedom of expression are inextricably intertwined – and how the iRevolution takes it another step further

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Paintings found on wall of Chauvet Cave – made circa 30,000 BCE

Recently, last Friday March 6th in fact, I had the privilege of speaking about freedom of expression to the Association des juristes d’expression française de la Colombie britannique. Normally, I would take my speaking notes and just convert them into a blog post. This is not possible here because first, my notes were “en français” and second, I undoubtedly butchered that otherwise beautiful language. This is part of the reason why there has been a bit of a lull between posts – I have been too busy reactivating old French language brain cells to prepare a new post.

This post is another in the series of posts in which I have explored the new Internet Age realities that exist for freedom of expression (for the other posts see “Freedom of expression and copyright in the Internet – The new realities of a cyberspace inhabited by copycats” (January 24, 2014), “The Internet Turns 25 Years Old – the Courts and the World Wide Web” (March 19, 2014) and, “The iRevolution revisited: when you share, are you expressing?” (November 13, 2014). In this blog post, I advance the thesis that the protection of freedom of expression must include not only the protection of the things expressed but the modalities and, specifically the technological modalities, by which human expression is transmitted and received.

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The legal profession’s ability to advocate in the public interest is upheld: Canada (Procureur general) v. Barreau du Quebec, 2014 QCCA 2234

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In a decision made in late 2014, the Quebec Court of Appeal affirmed the legal profession’s unique role in undertaking constitutional challenges. In a unanimous decision (Vezina, Savard, and Vauclair JJA), the Court upheld Justice Roy’s decision to reject the Government of Canada’s application to strike the claim of the Barreau du Quebec for want of standing. The relatively short decision, Canada (Procureur general) v. Barreau du Quebec, 2014 QCCA 2234, was released on December 4, 2014 and was a judgment “par la Cour”.

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Solicitor-client privilege – the Supreme Court finds that it is protected under the Charter: Canada (Attorney General) v. Federation of Law Societies of Canada, 2015 SCC 7

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Today, in Canada (Attorney General) v. Federation of Law Societies of Canada, 2015 SCC 7,the Supreme Court confirmed that one of the hallmarks of the legal profession, namely, solicitor-client privilege is one of the fundamental principles of justice worthy of constitutional sanction under s. 7 of the Charter. In reviewing the federal government’s anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering legislation, the Court also ruled that, to the extent the legislation required lawyers to obtain and keep information about their clients for the government, it constituted an unreasonable search and seizure contrary to s. 8 of the Charter.

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The Supremes “Charter” a new course in the waters of physician-assisted death in Canada

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Today, in its fifth decision of the year, the Supreme Court overturned yet another decades old precedent and found the Criminal Code provisions prohibiting physician-assisted death in end-of-life situations unconstitutional and contrary to s. 7 of the Charter. This is the third time this year that the Court has overturned one of its previous decisions on constitutional matters. In Carter v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 5, the Court spoke with one voice and in its own name (the headnote states that the precedent was “distinguished” but make no mistake, it no longer applies to these same statutory provisions against assisted death). No one justice was accredited with the authorship of the reasons.

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Nova Scotia Supreme Court slams Barristers’ Society for its decision on Trinity Western University Law School

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(Photograph from trunews.com)

Last week, Justice Jamie Campbell of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court delivered a scathing indictment of the decision of the Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society (the “Society”) to recognize law degrees for the proposed law school at Trinity Western University (“TWU”) only if TWU changes its “community covenant” against sex outside the confines of a legal marriage between a man and woman. The focus of the Society’s concerns is that the Community Covenant would have the effect of discriminating against members of the LGBT community. His judgment (Trinity Western University v. Nova Scotia Barristers’ Society, 2015 NSSC 25) is the first of what will no doubt be a series of judicial pronouncements on the various provincial law societies’ decision to accredit or not to accredit TWU’s proposed law school. Challenges in British Columbia and Ontario are also well on their way to being heard. Yet again, the collision between equality rights and freedom of religion finds itself on the center stage of Canada’s judicial arenas. The last time this issue went to the Supreme Court of Canada was in 2001 in yet another TWU case, Trinity Western University v. British Columbia College of Teachers, 2001 SCC 31. While the Court held that the Charter was not directly applicable in that case, it did determine that any concerns of the College of Teachers respecting the discriminatory effects against homosexuals were to be subject to the respect for the principles of the religious faith professed by TWU. Justice Campbell does not consider that the time is nigh for that 2001 judicial determination to change.

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In the name of workplace justice: the Court continues to beef up freedom of association

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In two decisions released only two weeks apart, the Supreme Court of Canada has clearly moved to “refang” the union movement, especially insofar as it involves government employers. In its first decision of the year, Mounted Police Association of Ontario v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 1, the majority of the Court ruled that the laws prohibiting RCMP members from being able to freely organize their own independent labour association (ie. a labour union) contravened their freedom of association as protected by s. 2(d) of the Charter and could not be justified under s. 1. In last Friday’s decision, Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v. Saskatchewan, 2015 SCC 4, a majority of the Court held that Saskatchewan’s “essential services” laws which prohibit the public service from striking were similarly contrary to s. 2(d) and unconstitutional. In both cases, Justice Rothstein (joined by Justice Wagner in the second decision) provided powerful dissents. As a result of these decisions and other relatively recent decisions, Canada constitutional protection of freedom of association has now come to protect core elements of labour relations, such as the right to bargain collectively, the right to strike and the right to freely choose an independent labour association to represent their interests viz-a-viz the employer. We have come a long, long way from the labour trilogy of 1987.

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The SCC rules on warrantless searches of cell phones: Police 1; Privacy 0

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The Supreme Court closed out 2014 with a ruling that has met not without some controversy. In R. v. Fearon, 2015 SCC 77, a bare majority held that the common law police power to search incident upon a lawful arrest survived the Charter‘s protection of the right of privacy, albeit with some limitations as imposed by Justice Cromwell (for the majority). Although the search in this case did not comply with the newly imposed qualifications and was therefore not compliant with the Charter, Justice Cromwell held that the evidence so obtained should not be excluded. The minority, led by Justice Karakatsanis, would have found the warrantless search to be unconstitutional and would have excluded the evidence so obtained. The qualifications to the police power to search incident upon an arrest are not easily and objectively assessed, and the principal criticism levied against them is that it will be difficult for the police to know if they are onside or offside of the constitutional mark.

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