In a pair of cases decided this summer, the Supreme Court of Canada addressed the division of jurisdiction between Canada’s tax court and federal courts. In both Dow Chemical Canada ULC v. Canada, 2024 SCC 23 and Iris Technologies Inc. v. Canada, 2024 SCC 24, the Court had to determine the appropriate venue for judicial […] Read more

As is well known, the appendix is a useless body part*. In Kolner v Alberta (Director of SafeRoads), 2024 ABKB 456, Bokenfohr J had to consider the legal utility of an appendix. It turns out that an appendix fares no better in administrative law than it does in the popular imagination. I have noted in […] Read more

A favoured tool of contemporary legislatures and regulators is the administrative monetary penalty. Rather than imposing criminal liability on regulated entities for breaches of industry standards, legislatures have regularly chosen to empower regulators to impose fines — often substantial — on offenders. These administrative monetary penalties have become an important part of the modern regulatory […] Read more

The High Court of Australia has for several years now struggled with the concept of materiality in the law of judicial review (see my piece from 2019). The judges have at times been squarely at odds about the meaning and scope of the concept. In LPDT v Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural […] Read more