Thoughts on Québec’s Bid for Gun-Registry Data

As promised, a few thoughts on Québec’s claim that the destruction of the long-gun registry data is unconstitutional. In no particular order:

1. This case forces the courts to grapple with the constitutional issues presented by co-operative federalism, of which the working of the gun registration regime seems to have been an example. Québec’s claim is based on its participation in the administration of the federal regulatory scheme; it would not hold up, or at least would be very weak, if Québec had not been involved in its running. If the long-gun registry had been a purely federal venture, there would have been no reason why Parliament, which had started it up, could not also put an end to it. But it is at least not crazy to say, as Québec now does, that provincial involvement in the regime’s operation means that the venture was not an exclusively federal one, so that provincial interests have to be taken into account in considering and implementing its termination.I don’t think our federalism jurisprudence, as it now stands, can sustain this claim. Perhaps the most relevant Supreme Court decision is the now-20 year old Reference Re Canada Assistance Plan (B.C.), [1991] 2 SCR 525, which dealt with the unilateral modification by Parliament of an agreement to help pay the costs of provincial social programmes. The Supreme Court stressed parliamentary sovereignty, and concluded that Parliament could do what it pleased. If that precedent applies to this case, Québec’s odds do not look good (and I do not recall Québec addressing it at all in its argument). But there might be a distinction between pure-cost sharing and a programme where the federal and provincial administrations are both involved. And in the last few years the Court has been emphasizing the importance of co-operative federalism, which, arguably, cannot work particularly well if either side is able, on a whim and despite protests from its erstwhile partner, to end its involvement in a co-operative project. Perhaps the questions about the best workings of a system of co-operative federalism are purely political; that seems to be the result of the Canada Assistance Plan case. But maybe it is time for Courts to start working out a legal framework.
2. The claim that the government holds its property – which in this case means data rather than physical assets – more or less as a trustee for the people sounds interesting and quite possibly right as a matter of political morality, but it is not so clear what it entails in practice. Even if we agree that the government has to use its property in the public interest, there is presumably no higher authority than Parliament in deciding what the public interest is. If Parliament decides that it is in the public interest to destroy the long-gun registry data, how can courts second-guess it?
3. If Québec succeeds in getting s. 29 of the Ending the Long-gun Registry Act declared unconstitutional, no long-gun registry data can be destroyed. The federal government is stuck with this data, which it does not want. What happens then?

Author: Leonid Sirota

Law nerd. I teach public law at the University of Reading, in the United Kingdom. I studied law at McGill, clerked at the Federal Court of Canada, and did graduate work at the NYU School of Law. I then taught in New Zealand before taking up my current position at Reading. View all posts by Leonid Sirota