Last month I gave a talk at the Journal of Commonwealth Law’s symposium on Human Rights in Administrative Agencies at the Université de Montréal, entitled “The Inevitability of Administrative Discretion and What it Should Mean for Human Rights”. Here’s the abstract: Given the vagaries of language and life there is no such thing as “clear” […] Read more

I am hitting the road next week for two events on Canadian administrative law. First, I am very happy to be speaking with Stratas JA at the OBA’s Annual Update on Judicial Review in Toronto next Tuesday (November 26). Having participated via videolink in recent years, into the early hours of the morning in the […] Read more

The unusual background to Crowder v. British Columbia (Attorney General)[1] related to a change to the province’s Supreme Court Rules[2]designed to reduce the cost of litigation in road traffic accident cases by limiting to three the number of expert reports which could be tendered in evidence and be the subject of disbursements. Under s. 1 […] Read more

The constitutional status of tribunal independence was squarely in issue in Walter v. British Columbia.[1] Controversy arose about the remuneration of the Chairperson of the British Columbia Review Board. Each Canadian province has a Review Board to make or review dispositions in respect of accused persons found Not Criminally Responsible by reason of Mental Disorder, […] Read more

There are many available definitions of administrative justice, a term which “has, until recently, been shrouded in obscurity”[1] and provoked “considerable disagreement”.[2] On the one hand, the term can be used to denote “the justice inherent in decision making”,[3] or “those qualities of decision making process that provide arguments for the acceptability of its decisions”.[4] […] Read more

I posted earlier this year about divergent approaches on Canadian courts of appeal to the application of the deferential standard of reasonableness to administrative interpretations of law. There was, on the one hand, the aggressive use by the British Columbia Court of Appeal of the principles of statutory interpretation to determine the best possible reading […] Read more

I should flag for readers three papers which I’ve recently uploaded to SSRN, a collection ranging from a comparative study of judicial review of factual error, through a critique of Irish judicial attitudes to the administrative state to an analysis of materiality in judicial review of administrative action. First, my contribution to the Oxford Handbook […] Read more

As regular readers know, the Supreme Court of Canada reserved judgment in its administrative law ‘trilogy‘ last December. The Court normally delivers its decisions within about six months but sometimes, as with the trilogy, takes longer. While we are waiting, I thought it might be useful to flag two recent papers which have appeared in […] Read more

Last month the Quebec Court of Appeal handed down its opinion in the Renvoi à la Cour d’appel du Québec portant sur la validité constitutionnelle des dispositions de l’article 35 du Code de procédure civile qui fixent à moins de 85 000 $ la compétence pécuniaire exclusive de la Cour du Québec et sur la […] Read more