**This is Part I of a two part series on the interaction between Doré and Vavilov. Tomorrow, I will post a review of one of the first post-Vavilov cases, Ferrier at the ONCA. Ferrier raises issues about the standard of review on constitutional matters**
Vavilov ushhered in a new era in Canadian administrative law, particularly as it pertains to judicial review of administrative interpretations of law. That new era, as far as I can tell, is wholly inconsistent with the justifications underlying the Supreme Court’s decision in Doré in which the Court held that courts should defer to administrative decisions that engage the Charter; specifically, an administrator’s balancing of Charter values with statutory objectives. Doré is inconsistent with Vavilov in at least two ways: (1) Doré’s treatment of expertise is inconsistent with Vavilov’s treatment of the same subject; (2) Vavilov’s comments about the Rule of Law present no principled reason to distinguish between statutory constitutional questions and administrative constitutional questions (3) even if the Doré reasonableness standard is maintained, reasonableness will likely mean much more than it has in the Court’s cases subsequent to Doré . In total, what we are seeing is two cases represented by two completely different theories of administrative law. The tension is strong.
First, an admission: Vavilov hedged on Doré. This is what the Court had to say:
Although the amici questioned the approach to the standard of review set out in Doré v. Barreau du Québec, 2012 SCC 12, [2012] 1 S.C.R. 395, a reconsideration of that approach is not germane to the issues in this appeal. However, it is important to draw a distinction between cases in which it is alleged that the effect of the administrative decision being reviewed is to unjustifiably limit rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (as was the case in Doré) and those in which the issue on review is whether a provision of the decision maker’s enabling statute violates the Charter (see, e.g., Nova Scotia (Workers’ Compensation Board) v. Martin, 2003 SCC 54, [2003] 2 S.C.R. 504, at para. 65). Our jurisprudence holds that an administrative decision maker’s interpretation of the latter issue should be reviewed for correctness, and that jurisprudence is not displaced by these reasons [57].
The Court was clearly right not to take the amici’s suggestion about Doré. There was no question of administrative interpretation engaging Charter rights or values on the facts of Vavilov (or the companion case of Bell/NFL), so it would be an unjustified expansion of the judicial role to deal with questions that were not before the court. But this does not mean that Doré sits easily with the new era of administrative law that Vavilov has ushered in.
Take, first, Vavilov’s comments on expertise. Vavilov concludes that expertise is not a legal reason for deference, as far as determining the standard of review [30-31]. Put differently, expertise cannot justify a presumption of deference because:
…if administrative decision makers are understood to possess specialized expertise on all questions that come before them, the concept of expertise ceases to assist a reviewing court in attempting to distinguish questions for which applying the reasonableness standard is appropriate from those for which it is not [28].
Specifically, then, expertise cannot assist a court in reviewing administrative interpretations of law, because it is not a good working assumption that decision-makers are expert on all matters that come before the court.
Now compare the tenor of these comments to what Doré had to say about expertise on constitutional matters. The Court in that case noted that a revised approach to the review of administrative decisions implicating the Charter involved “recognizing the expertise of these decision-makers” [35]. Specifically:
An administrative decision-maker exercising a discretionary power under his or her home statute, has, by virtue of expertise and specialization, particular familiarity with the competing considerations at play in weighing Charter values [48].
Putting Vavilov and Doré side by side like this illustrates the ill-fit: Doré’s underpinning concept is that of expertise, particularly the notion that administrators have expertise in legal matters as a presumptive rule. But if this is no longer assumed when it comes to selecting the standard of review in the Vavilov context, there is no reason to assume it in the constitutional context, where the case for expertise is—logically—weaker. In other words, constitutional law is not the same as routine legal matters with which administrators may have experience. Making the jump from these routine legal matters to constitutional matters was always the fatal flaw of Doré, and now that Vavilov does not even assume expertise when it comes to legal matters, there is no reason to make that same assumption on constitutional matters.
Next, consider what Vavilov had to say about the Rule of Law. The Rule of Law, according to the Supreme Court, will sometimes require “a singular, determinate and final answer” to the question before a particular court (Vavilov, at para 32). This makes sense: the Supreme Court has also said that the Rule of Law, among other things, “requires the creation and maintenance of an actual order of positive laws which preserves and embodies the more general principle of normative order” (Reference re Manitoba Language Rights, at 749). On certain questions, it would undermine this “general principle of normative order” for a court to take a “hands-off” approach to a certain decision, or to permit multiple “reasonable” interpretations of a particular issue to stand when it comes to the Constitution.
One of the categories of correctness review emphasized in Vavilov is constitutional questions, where “[t]he application of the correctness standard…respects the unique role of the judiciary in interpreting the Constitution and ensures that courts are able to provide the last word on questions for which the rule of law requires consistency and for which a final and determinate answer is necessary” (Vavilov, at para 53). Under this understanding, there is no principled reason that Vavilov’s comments about the Rule of Law and constitutional questions should necessitate a different response just because of the forum in which the constitutional argument arises. Just because, on judicial review, an applicant challenges a statute as opposed to an administrative decision should not change the task of the judiciary to be the final expositors of the Constitution. This, again, was a fatal flaw of Doré. It is, in my view, difficult for Doré to stand given Vavilov’s doubling-down on the traditional role of the courts in interpreting and applying the Constitution.
True, the concurring opinion in Vavilov (Abella and Karakatsanis JJ) was quick to point out that “[t]he majority’s approach to the rule of law, however, flows from a court-centric conception of the rule of law rooted in Dicey’s 19th century philosophy.” I’ve always been struck by the intellectual laziness of the charge of “Dicey” as a legal argument; but no matter, in the context of the Constitution, the Rule of Law is primarily the rule of courts, at least on the majority’s understanding in Vavilov. And, what’s more, the majority’s understanding is consistent with what the Supreme Court has said itself about the role of the judiciary in a constitutional democracy, in a variety of different contexts: Hunter v Southam, at 155: “The judiciary is the guardian of the constitution…”; Ell v Alberta, at para 23: “[a]ccordingly, the judiciary’s role as arbiter of disputes and guardian of the Constitution require that it be independent from all other bodies”; United States v Burns, at para 35: “…the Court is the guardian of the Constitution…”; Kourtessis v MNR, at 90: “The courts are the guardians of the Constitution and they must have the powers to forge the instruments necessary to maintain the integrity of the Constitution and to protect the rights it guarantees”; and in a judgment jointed by Abella and Karakatsanis JJ in the Nadon Reference, the Court endorsed the proposition that since the judiciary became the “guardian of the Constitution,” the Supreme Court itself became a “foundational premise of the Constitution” (at para 89). These comments can easily be taken to imply that courts, in comparison to administrators, have a unique role in interpreting the Constitution by systemic legal design, even if administrators, in the odd case, may have something of value to say about the Constitution. Particularly apt, on this score, is the comment in Ell regarding independence: courts are the only independent guardians of the Constitution.
Finally, there is something to say about reasons, even if correctness is not the applicable standard of review. Applying the reasonableness standard in the Doré context requires proportionality (see Doré , at para 56), but Doré does not explain explicitly what is required in terms of reasoning. That said, the Court has been reticent to adopt a formal reasons requirement for Doré -type decisions, consistent with the Court’s jurisprudence that reasonableness means different things in different contexts (see Catalyst, at para 18), and that the adequacy of reasons is not a standalone basis for review (see Newfoundland Nurses, at para 14), with courts being permitted to supplement reasons for decision (Newfoundland Nurses, at para 12). The classic example of this was in TWU, where the majority of the Court, relying on these authorities, concluded that simply because the Benchers were “alive” to the Charter issues, there was no issue of discretion fettering when the Law Society ordered a referendum on TWU (TWU, at para 56). In dissent in TWU, Brown and Côté JJ would have required more in the way of justification from the Law Society, especially given the Charter rights at play (TWU, at paras 295-296).
Vavilov says something different about what reasonableness requires, putting stress on Doré and its progeny. The Vavilov framework withdraws from the “supplementation” of reasons (Vavilov, at para 96), still permitting the reviewing court to look to the record, but not permitting courts to gin up its own reasons for decision. But reasons take on an expanded importance in Vavilov, specifically requiring a decision-maker to justify decision in relation to particular legal constraints on the decision-maker (Vavilov, at para 108) and in terms of the impact on the affected individual (Vavilov, at para 133), among other things. Interestingly, Vavilov does note that its reasons first methodology will be difficult where reasons are not provided (Vavilov, at para 137), explicitly citing TWU, and further notes that in the absence of reasons, courts must still apply the various constraints on the decision-maker, but that the analysis may focus more on outcome that on reasoning (Vavilov, at para 138).
Even with these comments in mind, the past precedent, TWU, and Vavilov do not stand easily together. Specifically, the most important legal constraint on any decision-maker is the Constitution. It is difficult to see how a decision-maker could fail to justify a decision under the Constitution and for a court to rule that that decision is reasonable—courts should not cooper up bad or non-existent reasoning in these cases. This is even more so given that one of the constraints on the decision-maker, the impact and importance to the affected individual, is particularly acute in situations involving constitutional rights. It might appear that in the constitutional context, more should be required if we retain a reasonableness standard on constitutional matters. Simply put, reading TWU and concluding that the decision-maker was “alive” to the Charter issues seems to be the wrong line of thinking, with Vavilov. In this sense, there are genuine signals pointing to Brown and Côté JJ’s dissent in TWU, where they would require more in term of reasoning. That said, this is an area of genuine ambiguity that I cannot resolve here, and there are also signals in Vavilov that cases like TWU are still good law.
I do not make these comments with the naïve understanding that the Court could not save Doré in light of Vavilov. Vavilov explicitly does not mention the Charter in the class of cases to which correctness should apply. And the Court’s approach could, admittedly, allow for Doré to stand. For example, courts could continue to apply the reasonableness standard to constitutional questions where expertise is demonstrated by an administrator in interpreting the Constitution. This finds some support in Vavilov, where expertise is “folded into the new starting point and, as explained below, expertise remains a relevant consideration in conducting reasonableness review” (Vavilov, at para 31). But this runs into a number of problems: first, it continues to apply a reasonableness standard even though expertise is no longer is a reason to apply that standard under Vavilov. Second, it would require courts, in each case, to measure expertise as an empirical matter on constitutional questions. While rules of thumb could be used to assist in this matter, it is unlikely to be an attractive option to the Court.
At the very least, Doré now stands at odds with Vavilov, its underlying justifications under stress because of the new administrative law foundation introduced by the Supreme Court. In my view, the two cases represent two different visions of administrative law. On one hand, Vavilov is indeed a move towards Diceyanism (and I mean this in the best way possible), in the sense that the statute is the centrepiece of the analysis when it comes to selecting the standard of review and applying it. Doré is based on more functional concerns, notably, expertise. There is a fundamental mismatch here. How long Doré lasts, only time will tell. But there is at least some reason to think that Doré is under significant tension because of Vavilov.
Double Aspect 
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