I recently had the considerable privilege of serving as amicus curiae to the Federal Court of Appeal in a fascinating, complex and controversial case about broadcasting regulation and free speech: Société Radio-Canada v. Canada (Attorney General), 2023 FCA 131. In a majority decision, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission found that Radio Canada had breached […] Read more

This is an excerpt from my forthcoming article “The Doré Duty: Fundamental Rights in Public Administration“, to appear shortly in the Canadian Bar Review. There are two aspects to the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Doré v Barreau du Québec:[1] the decision imposes a framework for judicial review of administrative action infringing […] Read more

It is often said that administrative bodies have no inherent jurisdiction, only those powers granted by the legislature.[1] According to the majority of the Supreme Court of Canada, per Bastarache J. in the ATCO case, those powers have “two sources”: “(1) express grant by statute (express power) and (2) common law, under the doctrine of […] Read more

My new paper on fundamental rights in public administration will appear in the next issue of the Canadian Bar Review. “The Doré Duty: Fundamental Rights in Public Administration” is now available on SSRN: In this paper I consider an important and heretofore understudied aspect of the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2012 decision in Doré v […] Read more

Policy Options is running a series — Lessons from the Rouleau Commission — prompted by the report of the Rouleau Commission into the invocation of the Emergencies Act in February 2022. My contribution, entitled “Legal tussling over the Emergencies Act is far from over”, can be found here. Here are the introductory paragraphs: The honking […] Read more

I have a short paper coming out soon in the Governance Review, entitled “Mapping Artificial Intelligence Use in the Government of Canada“. In particular, I offer a typology of use cases for AI systems and some critical observations on some of the uses. Here is the abstract: On the one hand, technological advances and their […] Read more

Two pieces of proposed legislation are currently winding their way through Parliament, one about judicial discipline, one about compensation for air travel passengers. As drafted, both bills prompt serious questions about judicial oversight and open justice. Judicial Oversight Several judicial discipline cases in recent times have become bogged down in lengthy litigation, paid for out […] Read more

In a new paper to be published in the Australian Journal of Administrative Law & Practice, entitled “Artificial Administration: Administrative Law, Administrative Justice and Accountability in the Age of Machines“, I bring together much of my previous scholarship on the topic of automation in public administration. In Parts II and III of the paper, I […] Read more

This short review will appear in the next issue of the Canadian Journal of Administrative Law & Practice John Mark Keyes, Executive Legislation, Third Edition, LexisNexis Canada, Markham, 2021, Hardcover $235.00, 726pp ISBN: 9780433499275 Relatively authors succeed in making substantial conceptual and practical contributions to the legal literature. John Mark Keyes’s Executive Legislation, now in […] Read more