Trinity Western, Dissected

Last week, I had the privilege of taking part in a discussion of the Supreme Court’s recent Trinity Western decisions organized by the Centre for Constitutional Studies. My presentation dealt with the Court’s majority’s embrace of the use of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, anti-discrimination legislation, and purported “Charter values” to impose on a private institution obligations to which no law subjects it. I argued that, although the majority judgment in Law Society of British Columbia v. Trinity Western University, 2018 SCC 32, refers to “shared values”, in a pluralistic society it is only laws that we share ― until we amend them through the appropriate process ― even as we strongly disagree about values.

For their part, my co-panellists, Howard Kislowicz and Jennifer Rason, spoke respectively about the conformity, or lack thereof, of Trinity Western to Supreme Court precedent in the realm of freedom of religion, and about the decision-making processes followed by the law societies, and their implication for judicial review of their decisions. While they were not as harshly critical of the Supreme Court as I was, I think it is fair to say that, in their own ways, they too were underwhelmed by the decisions.

Here is a recording of the event. My remarks start at about 9:40, but I strongly recommend those of Professors Kislowicz and Raso, as well as the Q&A.

Thanks to the Centre’s Patricia Paradis and her staff for putting this event together! I very much enjoyed it, and hope to be back sometime.

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