Charter
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Safety Regulations and the Charter
I wrote earlier this week about the decision of the Court of Appeal for Ontario R. v. Michaud, 2015 ONCA 585, which upheld the constitutionality of regulations requiring trucks to be equipped with a speed limiter that prevents them going faster than 105 km/h. The Court found that the regulations could put some truck drivers in danger by… Continue reading
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Safety, First
Yesterday, the Ontario Court of Appeal issued an interesting decision in R. v. Michaud, 2015 ONCA 585, a test case challenging the constitutionality of regulations requiring trucks to be equipped with a speed limiter that prevents them going faster than 105 km/h. The Court found that the regulations infringed the truckers’ right to the security of… Continue reading
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The Fog of Law
The Prime Minister has announced that, should his government return to power after the election, it will seek to enact legislation criminalizing the travel to some parts of the world, considered to be hotbeds of terrorism. Both the list of areas in question and the details of the legislation are sketchy at this point, so… Continue reading
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Shut Up!
Yesterday, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ruled that Parliament can disenfranchise Canadians who live abroad. The judgment, Frank v. Canada (Attorney General), 2015 ONCA 536, reverses that of the Superior Court, which had ruled that the provisions of the Canada Elections Act that prevent Canadians who have resided abroad for more than five years are… Continue reading
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What Were They Smoking?
Last week, the Supreme Court held that the prohibition on medical marijuana products intended to be ingested or applied as creams ― as opposed to dried medical marijuana for the purposes of smoking, for which a permission can be granted ― is arbitrary and, therefore, not in accordance with principles of fundamental justice, in violation of s. 7 of the… Continue reading
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Inutile ou inconstitutionnel?
En plus de s’attaquer à la liberté d’expression et à la primauté du droit avec leur projet de loi 59, le gouvernement du Québec et la ministre de la justice, Stéphanie Vallée, s’attaquent peut-être aussi à la liberté de religion avec le projet de loi 62. Peut-être, car ce texte législatif contient une exception qui pourrait en… Continue reading
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Rule & Exemption in Action
Emmett Macfarlane has an interesting post for Maclean’s discussing the legal and constitutional complexities of the brewing confrontation between the Mayor of Montréal, Denis Coderre, and the federal government about the possible opening of a number of supervised-injection centres in the city. In a nutshell, prof. Macfarlane points out that the federal government’s proposed (although still… Continue reading
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Is the Charter Really Democratic?
Andrew Coyne had an excellent column in the National Post for the 30th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which only came across after he re-shared it this week. (Indeed, I had originally thought it was published this week, but he has corrected me. Apologies!) Mr. Coyne argued that the Charter must be seen as… Continue reading
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Nothing Is Always Absolutely So
This morning, the Supreme Court has delivered its decision in R. v. Nur, 2015 SCC 15, striking down as “cruel and unusual,” and therefore contrary to s. 12 of the Charter, a mandatory minimum sentence for the simple possession of a restricted or prohibited firearm that is either loaded or stored with easily accessible ammunition,… Continue reading
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Splitting a Baby
There came a Catholic school and a minister of education unto the Supreme Court, and stood before it. And the school said, “Oh my Lords and my Ladies, I am a private Catholic school, and am delivered of a programme for teaching a class on Ethics and Religious Culture through the prism of my Catholic faith.… Continue reading
Double Aspect 