Gun-Registry Litigation News

I know, I know, you are as I excited as I am to read about the progress of Québec’s lawsuit to get its hands on the gun-registry data the federal government wants to destroy. So here goes. (If, for reasons beyond my comprehension, you are not breathlessly excited about this, rest assured that I have even more interesting stuff in the pipeline.)

Almost two weeks ago now – I’m late, I know – Justice Blanchard of the Superior Court of Québec issued a decision rejecting a motion Québec brought for an order compelling Canada to show to the Court that it was complying with the interlocutory injunctions the issued in the case, which require the federal government to keep collecting and maintaining the gun-registry data for the province of Québec. Québec analogized the case with that of Doucet‑Boudreau v. Nova Scotia (Minister of Education), 2003 SCC 62, [2003] 3 S.C.R. 3,  in which the Supreme Court upheld an order granted by Nova Scotia’s Supreme (i.e. trial) Court directing the province’s authorities to report to the court about the efforts they were making to discharge their constitutional duty to provide secondary education in French. Justice Blanchard was having none of it.

He observed that this is not – unlike Doucet-Boudreau – a Charter case, so that the broad grant of remedial powers in subs. 24(1) of the Charter does not apply. Nor was it a case, like Abdelrazik v. Canada (Minister of Foreign Affairs), 2009 FC 580, [2010] 1 F.C.R. 267, in which the party against whom the order was sought had a demonstrated history of bad faith. In the circumstances, “the Court’s role of constitutional umpire must not make it into an active participant in the litigation, unless, in exceptional circumstances, the very integrity of the Court or of the administration of justice, generically understood, is called into question” (par. 18). If Québec thinks that Canada is up to no good, it has both the means and the responsibility to find out and tell the court. The Court’s power to order a party to report on its compliance with its decisions must remain exceptional.

Sounds right to me.

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