The Governor General – will he be playing a bigger constitutional role after October 19th?

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It is almost exactly one month to Election Day in Canada and the party leaders have been making all sorts of statements with a view to garnering sufficient votes to form the next government. Some of their statements, however, have had constitutional implications. In today’s Globe & Mail, Professor Eric Adams of University of Alberta has presented a quick summary of the leaders’ misconceptions as to who gets to form a government in the event there is no one party with a majority in the House of Commons. His article, “Minority Governments: The constitutional rules of the game” outlines how Conservative leader Stephen Harper, NDP leader Tom Mulcair and Liberal leader Justin Trudeau all get it wrong when it comes time to articulating the rules for formation of government.

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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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