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Different But Equal
Most claims under the Charter‘s equality provision, s. 15(1), allege violations of the principle that like cases ought to be treated alike. So, for example, the appellant A. in the Supreme Court’s decision on the post-separation rights of common law spouses in Québec argued that common law couples are really like married ones, and should…
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A Purely Hypothetical Maiden
In one of my first posts, I wrote―referring to the suggestion in Stanislaw Lem’s The Cyberiad that there are “three distinct kinds of dragon: the mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical, … all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexist[ing] in an entirely different way”―that “judicial activism is something like the dragon of constitutional…
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In Vino Veritas
Un article publié aujourd’hui sur le site de La Presse parle d’un recours collectif intenté contre la SAQ parce que, selon l’avocat du demandeur, « les marges bénéficiaires de la SAQ sont actuellement disproportionnées, déraisonnables et exorbitantes alors qu’elle se trouve en position de monopole ». Bien que la SAQ soit en mesure d’acheter son vin…
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Vive la Différence!
It was a long time in coming, but the Supreme Court has finally delivered its ruling regarding the constitutionality of Québec’s (absence of) legal regime for de facto (a.k.a. common law) couples. The dispute pitted a wealthy businessman, identified by the Supreme Court as “B”, against his former common law spouse (and mother of his…
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In Cautious Praise of Rhetoric
Rhetoric―the art of packaging one’s arguments so as to make them more attractive―has a bad name. It is associated with deceit at worst, and meaninglessness at best. It is seen as a distraction. Why should we care about the way arguments are packaged―surely what really matters is their substance? A student put something like this…
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Organized Hypocrisy
I want to come back to the issue of human smuggling. I posted yesterday about R. v. Appulonappa, 2013 BCSC 31, a decision of the B.C. Supreme Court striking down the provision of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA among friends or former federal court clerks) which criminalized aiding people to come to Canada without the papers…
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Smuggling Intentions
Last week the Supreme Court of British Columbia declared Canada’s prohibition on human smuggling, s. 117 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, S.C. 2001, c. 27, [IRPA] unconstitutional because overbroad. S. 117 provides that, under pain of severe penalties, [n]o person shall knowingly organize, induce, aid or abet the coming into Canada of one…
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Difference without Discrimination
The Québec Court of Appeal delivered an important decision last Friday, Droit de la famille ― 139, 2013 QCCA 13, upholding the constitutionality of Québec’s child-support guidelines, despite the fact that their application results, in many cases, in substantially lower child-support awards than that of the federal guidelines which, in one way or another, now…
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Original Myth
Any constitution, at least I suppose any constitution that has existed for a while, is surrounded by myths―stories that we tell ourselves to explain why things are as they are and, often, to reassure ourselves that they are as they ought to be. Among the myths surrounding the Canadian constitution, one of the most popular…
Double Aspect 