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Laboured Thoughts
Over the last few weeks, the Supreme Court re-wrote yet another part of the Constitution ― this time, the Charter’s freedom of association provision. Section 2(d) now means that labour unions have a constitutional right to participate in a “meaningful process of collective bargaining,” created in Mounted Police Association of Ontario v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 SCC
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Un imam turbulent
La ministre de l’Immigration et de la pensée unique Diversité, Kathleen Weil, se sentait un peu comme Henri II ces derniers jours. « N’y aura-t-il personne », se demandait-elle, « pour me débarrasser de cet imam turbulent? » L’imam, Hamza Chaoui, est turbulent, il est vrai. La démocratie, l’égalité, et la liberté religieuse ― bref,
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What Does This Mean?
Those of you who have been following this blog for a while will recall that I take a lot of interest in oaths; especially, but not exclusively, citizenship oaths. A paper of mine arguing that the Canadian citizenship oath is unconstitutional as an unjustified infringement of the freedom of conscience came out in the last
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“For The Security of the Country”
Apologies for my long silence. I know I have ground to make up, what with the Supreme Court’s last Friday’s decisions. But let me start with something entirely different: a passage in Justice Taschereau’s dissent from the Supreme Court’s famous decision in Switzman v. Elbling, [1957] S.C.R. 285, which struck down Québec’s infamous “Padlock Law,” formally An
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A Heap of Trouble
It’s just one decision, and in all likelihood a legally correct one at that ― and yet, precisely because it is likely correct, it illustrates any number of things that are wrong in Canadian law: Thibault c. Da Costa, 2014 QCCA 2437. The case arose out of disciplinary proceedings instituted by the syndic of the
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All or Nothing
I want to come back, briefly, to the crazy idea I put forward last weekend, about the Governor General starting to appoint Senators without waiting for Prime Ministerial advice if it becomes clear that such advice is not and will not be forthcoming. Actually, maybe it wasn’t such a crazy idea because, as Aniz Alani
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Please Advise
The Prime Minister is apparently refusing to have any new Senators appointed, until, well, who knows (though one may suspect that it is until the next election. The leader of the official opposition has already declared that he would never appoint any Senators ever. And, as I noted in my first post on this subject,
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Disrupting C-36
The Economist has published a lengthy and informative “briefing” on the ways in which the internet is changing prostitution ― often, although not always, for the benefit of sex workers. As it explains, the effects of new technologies on what is usually said to be the oldest profession are far-reaching, and mostly positive ― insofar
Double Aspect 