The Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Canadian Council for Refugees v. Canada (Citizenship and Immigration), 2023 SCC 17 sets out some important principles about challenges to government action at the intersection of constitutional and administrative law. On balance, I think the decision limits the potential for systemic challenges to complex statutory and regulatory regimes […] Read more

The theme for next year’s Administrative Law & Governance Colloquium is “Executive Power”: Executive power has been the site of passionate debate in liberal democracies for many centuries. In recent decades, authority has concentrated in the hands of presidents and prime ministers, with voters increasingly looking to these office holders to give effect to their […] Read more

Acting for the intervener Canadian Telecommunications Association, I filed a factum in the upcoming Yatar appeal at the Supreme Court of Canada this morning. Here is an extract about the constitutional foundations of judicial review. The factum will be available here in due course, along with all the others. It is useful to set out […] Read more

A quick note to congratulate Mark Mancini on reaching 100 issues of his Sunday Evening Administrative Review. The 100th issue features a nice essay by Justice David Stratas on the utility of Mark’s newsletter and the application of the Vavilov framework. Subscribers to the ‘SEAR’ get a weekly digest of important administrative law cases, along […] Read more

The supervisory jurisdiction is a core function of Canada’s superior courts. It cannot be exercised by another body, nor can access to the supervisory jurisdiction be precluded, as this superintending and reforming power has a solid constitutional foundation in s. 96 of the Constitution Act, 1867. (The sweep of these propositions will be in issue […] Read more

I have uploaded a pre-proof version of the first chapter of A Culture of Justification: Vavilov and the Future of Administrative Law to SSRN: “Why is Administrative Law So Complicated?” Here is a final extract from the chapter: It should be clear from the discussion so far in this Chapter that there is no ‘Constitution’ […] Read more

I should flag a very fun/interesting/depressing paper by Professor Andrew Green (University of Toronto), “How Important are the Groundbreaking Cases in Administrative Law?“: The story of Canadian administrative law could seen as a move towards deference driven by some fundamental decisions of the Supreme Court of Canada. Debates about this move centre around the proper […] Read more

I have uploaded a pre-proof version of the first chapter of A Culture of Justification: Vavilov and the Future of Administrative Law to SSRN: “Why is Administrative Law So Complicated?” Here is an extract: Three concepts have been of central importance to Canadian administrative law in recent decades. One of them – jurisdiction – is […] Read more

As is well known, administrative tribunals enjoy no constitutional status in Canada and benefit from no entrenched protection for independence. In McAnsh v. Ontario, 2023 ONSC 3537, the representative plaintiff sought to present a novel administrative independence claim in contract (Disclosure: I aided counsel for the representative plaintiff in this case though I had no […] Read more

It is settled law that discretionary powers must be exercised for proper purposes and by taking into account relevant considerations. A pair of recent decisions from the High Court of Australia illustrate this settled law quite nicely: Minister for Immigration, Citizenship, Migrant Services and Multicultural Affairs v Thornton [2023] HCA 17; and ENT19 v Minister […] Read more