In October, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal released its much-anticipated decision in Strom. Strom raised a number of important issues: “ “at the intersection between professional regulation, Ms. Strom’s private life, and the s.2(b) Charter guarantee of freedom of expression in the age of social media.”
Strom was a registered nurse. Her grandfather tragically passed at a long-term care facility. Strom took to Facebook to criticize the care her grandfather received at the facility. The facility’s employees reported the comments to the Saskatchewan Registered Nurses’ Association (SRNA). The SRNA charged Strom with professional misconduct, and the SRNA Discipline Committee found her guilty.
The Court ultimately overturned the Discipline Committee’s decision. For many reasons that I cannot explore here, I think this is the right decision, in law and in principle. But one aspect of the decision is of particular interest to me: the Court’s standard of review discussion as it related to the freedom of expression arguments raised by Strom.
Of course, in such a case, the framework that governs the standard of review analysis is Doré. Doré holds that the standard of review when a court reviews an administrative decision is reasonableness (Doré, at para 7). Doré also introduces a proportionality framework for assessing whether a decision-maker has struck a reasonable balance between the Charter right at hand and the statutory objective. Post-Vavilov, it is at least an open question about whether Doré is still good law. This is because Vavilov reaffirms that, when litigants challenge a law under the Constitution, the standard of review is correctness (Vavilov, at para 56). I, for one, have questioned why it is that different standards of review should apply, especially since the Court in Vavilov recognized that legislatures cannot “…alter the constitutional limits of executive power by delegating authority to an administrative body” (Vavilov, at para 56).
Enter Strom. In that case, both parties agreed that the standard of review is correctness on the Charter issue (Strom, at para 133). The Court also agreed, but only because the case came to court via a statutory right of appeal, and under Vavilov, statutory rights of appeal invite the appellate standards of review (correctness on questions of law, palpable and overriding error on questions of fact/mixed fact and law) (see Strom, at para 133). The Court noted, though, the following, at para 133:
It is not necessary to consider the question left unanswered by Vavilov, at paragraph 57; that is, what is the standard of review when the issue of whether an administrative decision has unjustifiably limited Charter rights is raised on judicial review, rather than on appeal?
This, in itself, is not really problematic. Given the fact that, for now, Doré lives another day, it would not be appropriate for an appellate court to apply the correctness standard to Doré-type situations. It is defensible—and proper—to simply classify a constitutional issue as a question of law that falls under the scope of an appeal right. And at the end of the day, it does not matter much for a results perspective, because the standard will be correctness either way.
However, in choosing the correctness standard, the Court then did something that is difficult to understand. It said the following, at para 140:
What, then, is an appellate court’s task when reviewing whether the decision of an administrative body unjustifiably infringed a Charter right? In substance, that task is summarily described in Doré at paragraph 6, despite the fact that the standard of review is correctness. The Court’s task is to determine whether the decision-maker disproportionately limited the Charter right or struck an appropriate balance between the Charter right and statutory objectives.
The Court went on to describe the question raised by the case, at para 166:
The question as to whether it has imposed excessive limits is the proportionality question. Here, it is whether the Discipline Committee advanced its statutory objective in a manner that is proportionate to the impact on Ms. Strom’s right to freedom of expression. One aspect of that question is whether the impact on her freedom of speech in her private life was minimal or serious.
The Court then went on to apply the Doré framework, though made reference to some parts of the Oakes test (see para 153).
This strikes me as an oddity. Let’s take what the Court describes its task to be. When courts apply the correctness standard, courts focus on “the conclusion the court itself would have reached in the administrative decision maker’s place” (Vavilov, at para 15). The proportionality analysis advanced in Doré, however, seems to have deference built-in to it. While Doré notes that the Oakes test and the Doré framework “exercise the same justificatory muscles,” (Doré, at para 5), Doré deference asks courts to give some weight to the statutory objective being advanced by the decision-maker. This was, indeed, a bone of contention for the dissent of Brown and Côté JJ in Trinity Western. But when a court conducts correctness review, at least in theory, the court should not give any weight to what the decision-maker’s reasons are for making
That said, there are no perfect Platonic forms in law. It is true that Oakes itself has developed to contemplate deference in its application. And it is also true that courts, post-Vavilov, have applied what I call “light correctness review” (see Planet Energy, at para 31), where a certain amount of weight is given to the decision-maker’s “…interpretation respecting the words of the Act, the general scheme of the Act and the policy objectives behind the provision.” This could be seen as a sort of Skidmore-like deference, under which courts give non-binding weight to an administrative interpretation.
That said, the inherently deferential idea of Doré review seems inconsistent with a stringent application of the correctness standard. This, to me, is a theoretical oddity, even if its effect is blunted on the edges.
Double Aspect 