Doré – Double Aspect

The Law of Bonkerstown

Does the constitution mandate the soft bigotry of low expectations?

In a much-noticed decision, Ontario Teacher Candidates’ Council v The Queen, 2021 ONSC 7386, the Ontario Divisional Court has declared unconstitutional a standardized test would-be teachers were required to take in Ontario, as well as provisions of the Ontario College of Teachers Act and regulations made under it that required the test to be administered. The Court found that the test infringed the equality rights of “racialized” candidates under section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, because they (or at least some groups among them) had significantly lower pass rates than white ones. The decision is perverse in itself, as well as showing the perversity of section 15 jurisprudence.

The case can be summarised quite simply. In the face of concerns about falling student performance on mathematics tests, the Ontario legislature introduced a requirement that aspiring teachers themselves pass a standardized test. Regulations were drawn up and a test designed, drawing on a “bank of math questions used for Grade 3, 6, and 9 assessments” for its substantive part and “on Ministry policy documents for the pedagogy component”. [24] Alas, despite two reviews “for bias and sensitivity to equity issues” [25] the results of a trial run and of the first official iteration of the test showed considerable disparities between ethnic and linguistic categories of test-takers. A group of would-be teachers, supported, it is worth noting, by the teachers’ union, challenged the test on the basis that these disparities amounted to unconstitutional discrimination.

In a unanimous opinion by Justices Backhouse and Nishikawa, the Divisional Court agrees. Following Fraser v Canada (Attorney General), 2020 SCC 28, it explains that section 15 rights are limited whenever state action impacts a group defined by a trait it names or an analogous one more severely than a relevantly comparable group, and this disparity “has the effect of reinforcing, exacerbating or perpetuating disadvantage”. [56] Crucially, there is no need for a demonstrated causal connection between the disparity and the disadvantaged group’s characteristics, and no need for all of the disadvantaged group’s members to be similarly affected.

This test is met here by the statistical showing that some non-white groups have done noticeably worse than white test-takers ― a result that the Court ties to the fact that “[t]he education system in Ontario has historically imposed disadvantages on Black and Indigenous students” [64] and that “Black and Indigenous students tend to be over-represented in less challenging, basic and general level courses, and under-represented in advanced courses”. [65] Such students, the Court says, would do better if there were more teachers who shared their background, but there are not ― on the contrary, “[t]wenty-six percent of Ontario students are racialized. However, only thirteen percent of teachers are racialized”. [67] In addition to the statistics, the Court discusses what it describes as “qualitative evidence”, in the form of an affidavit by one candidate, of African origin, who found taking the test difficult. One reason for this was that the test “is taken on a computer”, while the candidate “ha[d] never used a computer or calculator for math and ha[d] never taken a computer-based math test” [89] ― though this candidate was actually successful on the math part of the test, and only struggled with the pedagogy one.

The Court then asks whether this limitation of equality rights is justified in a free and democratic society. It accepts the government’s submission that the test is imposed to improve student performance and is a rational way to do so. Furthermore, the issue involves balancing would-be teachers’ rights and the needs of the students, which points to “a highly deferential approach” [132] to deciding whether the test is a minimally impairing way of achieving the government’s purposes. Yet the Court still finds that the test is not justified. This is, crucially, because the government would do as well ― or, the Court strongly suggests, better ― if the test were replaced with a requirement that aspiring teachers be required to take a math course as part of their mandatory education. The Court’s key finding is that this

would be significantly less impairing of equality rights. There is a plethora of evidence in the record highlighting the disproportionate impacts of standardized testing based on race … In contrast, there is no evidence to suggest that these negative diversity impacts would exist in the context of a mandatory math course (i.e. that racialized teacher candidates might disproportionately fail these math courses), and we do not think such an inference can be made on the basis of logic or common sense. [142]

This way lies madness. The Divisional Court is, of course, bound by the Supreme Court’s test at the section 15 stage of the analysis, and for the most part it should not be faulted for the way in which it applies it. What its application of the test makes clear, though, is that this test is, to use a technical term, bonkers. It compels the conclusion that constitutional rights are limited ― or, as the Court puts it, prima facie breached ― by what could, for all we know, be statistical artefacts. (One point that arises in the Court’s discussion is whether data from one trial and one official test are sufficient to support its conclusions. There is a logic to the Court’s response that “a claimant group must wait years before it is in a position to challenge a regulation that it alleges is discriminatory”, [85] but that’s because we are used to thinking of constitutional violations that are more concrete and immediate than what spreadsheets capture.) References to historical discrimination and current statistical disparities are only for colour; they do are not meant to have any actual explanatory power. They cannot, for instance, account for the fact that, on the trial edition of the test, the disparity between candidates of “Caribbean” and “African” backgrounds was almost as great as that between “Caribbean” and “European” candidates. A potential constitutional violation is made out by a showing no one needs to and, quite possibly, can explain. This is a surrender to, indeed an embrace of, irrationality masquerading legal doctrine.

Meanwhile, the Divisional Court’s approach to section 1 is perverse in its own right, though it is also consistent with the underlying logic of the Supreme Court’s approach. The Court says that the province should rely on courses in mathematics rather than tests to ensure that teachers are competent, because there is no evidence of disparate effect of a course requirement. For one thing, note that the Court doesn’t say there is evidence of equal outcomes. It’s just that nobody seems to have studied the matter. And consider: if the course uses rigorous assessment of the same kinds of skills that the test measured, why would the outcomes be different? Alternatively, how will we know that the reason for the course requirement not yielding disparate outcomes won’t be a lack of rigorous assessment? I’ve taught enough at universities to know that this is not exactly a far-fetched hypothesis.

Here is the desperately sad thing about the Court’s reasoning. The Court notes that one problem with the relative paucity of minority teachers is that, at least in the United States, “non-Black teachers had significantly lower expectations of educational attainment for Black students than Black teachers”. [68] Yet its ruling manifests and perpetuates exactly this sort of soft bigotry of low expectations. We can’t expect, it says, “racialized” candidates to succeed on a standardized test twice vetted for sensitivity and bias. The “qualitative evidence” on which the Court relies is telling in this regard. It is, apparently, too much to ask of a teacher, or at any rate, on the Court’s logical, a “racialized” teacher, in the 21st century to be able to do a test on a computer. We shouldn’t care that a future teacher cannot answer multiple-choice questions about pedagogy, because hey, he is “uniquely qualified to broaden students’ awareness and understanding of Franco-African culture and cross-cultural world views”. [91] This presumption that letting members of minority groups cut corners is the only way they can succeed is what disregards the constitutional mandate of equality ― not holding them to the same standard as everyone else.

And yes, of course, it’s not impossible that the standard is set in an insidiously biased way. Needless to say, a standard vetted, twice, for precisely this potential problem by people genuinely concerned about this possibility is unlikely to have this problem. Still, perhaps. But then it should be possible to demonstrate that this is so. As Justices Brown and Rowe say in their dissent in Fraser, one should not assume that a statistical disparity in outcomes between groups or a correlation between disadvantage and membership in a group equals causation:

where one is dealing with complex social and economic considerations … one can readily assume that there are many factors involved, some of which will give rise to causation while others will simply be the result of coincidence (that is, caused by independent factors). [180; emphasis in the original]

Let me end this part of the past by quoting Chad Williams, writing for Fair for All:

the fundamental assumption of critical race theory is that disparities between racial groups are in themselves evidence of racism. This assumption is faulty because it fails to allow or account for the numerous reasons other than racism that racial groups might have different outcomes. At the population level, these plausible reasons include age, geography, and, of course, culture. Many analysts of group differences are trapped in the false binary that these differences must result from either racism or genetic differences. However, Thomas Sowell and others have made compelling arguments about why this simply is not true. This is not to say that past disparate treatment has had no effect on current disparate outcomes, but it certainly cannot be the only cause for these disparities. Accordingly, a policy that begins from the faulty assumption that disparities equal racism is bound to fail as a bulwark against what actual racism still exists today.

This policy is the law the Supreme Court’s created in Fraser, and the Divisional Court’s decision in Candidates’ Council illustrates the tragic consequences it is bound to have.

Before addressing the question “and now what?”, let me point out two things about this case that I do not understand. One has to do with what exactly the Court is deciding. Beyond explaining that a recent amendment to the College of Teachers Act required the test to be set up and regulations under the Act gave effect to the requirement, the Court’s reasons focus entirely on the test. The evidence, such as it was, had to do with the results of different groups of candidates on the particular test they were administered, and the experience of some individual candidates. Yet the court not only invalidates the test, but also the statutory provision and the regulation pursuant to which it was created. It doesn’t at all explain why. Under the heading “What Is the Appropriate Remedy?” it simply states that “[a] declaration” to this effect “will issue”. [161] The province can’t create a new test even if thinks that it might come up with one that will not produce the disparities this one did. That doesn’t seem right to me, and the absence of any explanation does not speak well of the Court’s commitment to transparency and to judicial craft.

Relatedly, I do not understand the Court’s approach to the standard of review. The Court deals with it briskly, citing Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65, for the proposition that “constitutional questions are reviewed on a standard of correctness” [50]. But that seems too quick. Vavilov makes a

distinction between cases in which it is alleged that the effect of the administrative decision being reviewed is to unjustifiably limit [Charter] rights … and those in which the issue on review is whether a provision of the decision maker’s enabling statute violates the Charter. [57]

The former type of cases is not, ostensibly, decided on the correctness standard at all, but following the framework set out in Doré v Barreau du Québec, 2012 SCC 12, [2012] 1 SCR 395 and refined in a number of subsequent cases. Only the latter attract the correctness standard. Co-blogger Mark Mancini has argued that this is incompatible with Vavilov‘s overall thrust, and so have I, but that’s how it is until the Supreme Court says otherwise. Now, as I’ve alluded to just above, Candidates’ Council seems to involve both types of issues. The design of the test is a discretionary administrative decision. It’s not prescribed by statute or regulation: regulation 3 of the Proficiency in Mathematics Regulations, made under the College of Teachers Act, simply provides that “[T]he Education Quality and Accountability Office shall develop English and French versions of a mathematics test”. The test, then, should in principle be assessed under the Doré framework, on a reasonableness standard. Meanwhile, the Regulations and the enabling section of the Act are obviously the kind of provision whose constitutionality falls to be addressed on the correctness standard under Vavilov.

Does that make sense? No, not really. I would even say, none at all. But that’s what Vavilov pretty clearly seems to require. It is puzzling that the Court does not even attempt to engage with its demands. This isn’t even a matter of fudging the law to get to a desired outcome ― as we have seen, the Court makes a show of being deferential while ostensibly applying the correctness standard, and strikes down the test anyway. It could easily have reached the same result under Doré. I suppose the absurdity of the Vavilov/Doré cohabitation was simply too much to deal with.

So what to do about this terrible decision? Unsurprisingly given both the Zeitgeist and the egregious nature of this decision, the n-word ― “notwithstanding” ― has been thrown around since the decision came out. More than on other occasions, I understand the impulse. But, as before, I remain of the view that it must be resisted. While using the “notwithstanding clause” to undo this particular decision may be a short-term fix, it is not a genuine solution to the underlying problem. The invocation of s 33 of the Charter will have to be renewed every five years. A legislature that takes a different view of either the substantive issues or indeed the propriety of using the notwithstanding clause itself need not do so. More importantly, using the notwithstanding clause to resurrect this particular policy does nothing to prevent other judgments, striking down other policies, from applying the same misbegotten principles as the Divisional Court applied here. Are the supporters of the notwithstanding clause saying that it should be used, René Lévesque-style, to insulate all law from judicial review? They’ve always been angry at me for suggesting that that that’s where their positions naturally led.

The immediate solution, of course, is for the province to appeal. One should hope that the Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court if need be, will restore sanity, if only on the section 1 issue, on which Fraser does not control. Otherwise, the appropriate solution ― and it is probably well worth pursuing regardless of the outcome of the appeal ― is an amendment to section 15 of the Charter. At a minimum, it should endorse the dissenting position in Fraser, requiring a showing of causation for statistical disparities to be regarded as limiting equality rights. More radically, the amendment could excluding disparate impact discrimination from section 15’s scope. My tentative opinion is that this is the better, cleaner option ― but I am open to persuasion. Either way, an amendment is both a more permanent ― not to mention transparent and honest ― way of avoiding similar disasters in the future than using the notwithstanding clause to revive this particular policy, and a more modest one than a blanket invocation of the notwithstanding clause to prevent section 15 challenges at all would be.

Unholy Trinity

Introducing a new article that makes the case against judicial deference to administrative applications of constitutional law

Readers may recall my unhappiness when the Supreme Court decided the companion cases in which the Trinity Western University challenged the denials of accreditation to its proposed law school by the law societies in British Columbia and Ontario, Law Society of British Columbia v Trinity Western University, 2018 SCC 32, [2018] 2 SCR 293 and Trinity Western University v. Law Society of Upper Canada, 2018 SCC 33, [2018] 2 SCR 453. I argued that “[t]he Supreme Court’s decision and reasoning subvert the Rule of Law and nullify the constitutional protection for religious freedom“.

One salient feature of these cases was the Supreme Court’s (re-)embrace of its earlier decisions in Doré v Barreau du Québec, 2012 SCC 12, [2012] 1 SCR 395 and Loyola High School v Quebec (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 12, [2015] 1 SCR 613, which urged judicial deference to administrative decision-makers who applied (or indeed simply ought to have borne in mind) the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Trinity Western cases emphasize this deference, as well as various other aspects of the Canadian judiciary’s surrender of its interpretive authority over the law, which has now been partially walked back in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65.

At the kind invitation of Matthew Harrington in his capacity as editor of the Journal of Commonwealth Law, I have put my thoughts on this aspect of the Trinity Western cases and generally on the misbegotten idea of judicial deference to administrative applications of constitutional law into article form. The piece, “Unholy Trinity: The Failure of Administrative Constitutionalism in Canada”, is now available from the Journal’s website and my SSRN. Here is the abstract:

The jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Canada that follows Doré v Barreau du Québec involves administrative decision-makers as key actors in the implementation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Supreme Court emphasizes their expertise in implementing constitutional rights and “Charter values” in the context of the regulatory regimes they are charged with enforcing, and holds that this expertise entitles administrative tribunals to deference when they make decisions that affect the rights the Charter protects or the values that underpin these rights. This article argues that the Supreme Court is wrong to endorse this deferential approach, sometimes described as “administrative constitutionalism”.

It does so by examining the Supreme Court’s decisions in the companion cases that upheld the denial of accreditation by the law societies of British Columbia and Ontario to a proposed fundamentalist Christian law school (the Trinity Western Cases). After reviewing both academic defences of “administrative constitutionalism” and Supreme Court’s previous engagement with it, the article shows that the Trinity Western Cases illustrate the failure of “administrative constitutionalism” to live up to the main arguments made by its supporters. This failure is not accidental, but consistent with significant trends in Canadian administrative law. The article then goes on to consider the implications of the Supreme Court’s decision in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov for the future of “administrative constitutionalism” in Canada, arguing that Vavilov undermines the theoretical foundations of “administrative constitutionalism” or, at a minimum, will change the way it is implemented. The article concludes with an argument that, in addition to not delivering on the promises made on its behalf, “administrative constitutionalism” is also contrary to the Rule of Law. “Administrative constitutionalism” is second-rate constitutionalism in practice, and wrong in principle. The sooner it is recognized for the misguided idea that it is and abandoned, the stronger our actual constitution and the rights it protects will be.

The issue of whether, or at least to what extent and on what conditions, courts should continue to defer to administrative applications of the Charter is very much a live one in the aftermath of Vavilov. Lower courts have ask themselves how to apply Doré in light of Vavilov’s guidance on reasonableness review, and my article makes some suggestions which might be useful in this regard. And the Supreme Court itself, having punted on deference in Charter cases for now, will have to revisit the issue, presumably once Doré‘s author and staunch defender, Justice Abella, retires next year. I would like to think that my paper ― and the somewhat less uncompromising one by co-blogger Mark Mancini, which is set to appear in the Dalhousie Law Journal ― can contribute to the arguments that those challenging Doré will make on that occasion. I’ll be happy to speak to anyone making such arguments. Doré must go, and the delusion of “administrative constitutionalism” and the injustice of the Trinity Western cases must go with it.

Doré Revisited: A Response to Professor Daly

Over on Administrative Law Matters, Professor Paul Daly argues that Doré actually “emerges strengthened” from Vavilov. Professor Daly’s post responds to my own paper (The Conceptual Gap Between Doré and Vavilov) and post, where I argue the opposite. In this post, I would like to respond critically to Professor Daly’s interesting and provocative arguments. I first recap my position on the matter. Then, I review Professor Daly’s arguments, and respond in turn. In whole, I remain convinced that Doré is inconsistent with Vavilov. Specifically, I disagree with Professor Daly that the presumption of reasonableness applies to Charter issues arising in the scope of administrative jurisdiction. Moreover, I disagree that Vavilov’s articulation of reasonableness review is functionally similar to Doré’s. As it turns out, these disagreements matter for the continued propriety of Doré post-Vavilov.

***

As I wrote in both my paper and post on the matter, there are key tensions between Vavilov and Doré that deserve some attention.

These tensions arise with respect to both selecting and applying the standard of review. On the selection front, Doré reasonableness is based on a functionalist idea, where the expertise of decision-makers in deciding constitutional matters is presumed (see Doré , at para 46). This justified the selection of a reasonableness standard of review when an administrative decision is challenged as unconstitutional—even though a correctness standard applies when a statute under which an administrator may operate is challenged (see Vavilov, at para 57). However, Vavilov resiled from this presumptive stance on ordinary questions of law, instead rooting the presumption of reasonableness review on the fact of delegation, not expertise (see Vavilov, at para 30). This, to my mind, illustrates an inconsistency: why would a court presume expertise on constitutional matters, but not on ordinary legal interpretation (the stuff of Vavilov)?

On the application front, I argued that Vavilov probably introduced stricter reasonableness review than the sort of reasonableness review envisioned in Doré and later represented in its progeny (for example, TWU). This is because there are aspects of Vavilov that are more formalist: for example, the focus on the statute as the “most salient aspect” of the legal context relevant to judicial review (Vavilov, at para 108). Transposed into the Doré context, this might mean that decision-makers should focus on the existing constitutional text instead of abstract values. I also admitted in my paper that Vavilov isn’t just one thing—there is a focus on developing a “culture of justification” in administrative decision-making (see Vavilov, at para 2; The Conceptual Gap, at 13-14). But even this is inconsistent with Doré , which said very little about the sorts of reasons required in a constitutional context; in fact, no guidance was given in Doré at all, except to say that decision-makers should balance “the Charter values with the statutory objectives” (Doré , at para 55). Contrast this with Vavilov’s detailed approach to reasons-giving, and we see not only an inconsistency, but a schism.

***

Not so fast, says Professor Daly. For him, when it comes to both selecting and applying the standard of review, there are no great tensions between Vavilov and Doré. Indeed, for Professor Daly, “…Doré emerges strengthened from Vavilov, not weakened.” This is because “…the excision of expertise from the process of selecting the standard of review means that the presumption of reasonableness review certainly applies to Charter issues.” Vavilov indeed does draw a distinction between “merits” review, under which reasonableness presumptively applies, and issues of procedural fairness (see Vavilov, at para 23). If this is the case, expertise no longer matters one way or another to determining the standard of review. Professor Daly further argues that the exercise of discretion implicating constitutional matters is different than pure challenges to statutes under the Charter. In the latter case, uniformity is required, on Vavilov’s own terms. But in the former case: “…answers can legitimately vary as between different regulatory regimes: for example, what is a proportionate restraint on freedom of expression in the workplace may not be proportionate in a municipal election campaign…”

When it comes to applying the standard of review, Professor Daly notes that “[t]here is nothing formalist about the detailed articulation of reasonableness in Part III of Vavilov” (though he goes on to concede that “[s]ome components of Vavilovian reasonableness review can fairly be described as formalist or Diceyan”). He concludes that “[a]dministrative decision-makers can continue to contribute to our collective understanding of the Charter in its application to particular regulatory settings.”

***

While I will note areas of agreement, I must strenuously disagree with much of what Professor Daly says about Doré in light of Vavilov, when it comes to selecting the standard of review. The core disagreement between our positions lies in how far each of us would extend the presumption of reasonableness. For Professor Daly, the presumption applies to Doré -type issues. But for me, the presumption of reasonableness outlined in Vavilov must necessarily exclude Doré -type issues. This is for two reasons. First, the presumption, rooted in legislative intent, cannot apply to Charter issues—the legislature cannot intend anything with respect to the depth of scrutiny used by a reviewing court on constitutional matters. Second, the standard of review applied to Charter issues should not depend on the context in which these issues are raised: either way, the Constitution is a fundamental constraint on government actors, requiring uniform interpretation by the courts.

Let’s begin with the first argument by reviewing the conceptual basis for the presumption of reasonableness. As the Court notes in Vavilov, the presumption of reasonableness review is based on the “very fact that the legislature has chosen to delegate authority…” (Vavilov, at para 30). In other words, “[t]he presumption of reasonableness review…is intended to give effect to the legislature’s choice to leave certain matters with administrative decision makers rather than the courts” (Vavilov, at para 33). Legislative intent guides the presumption of reasonableness review, at least on ordinary questions of law. The fiction being deployed here is that the legislature intended deference when it delegated authority to an administrative decision-maker.

While it might be defensible to suggest that a legislature intends deference when it delegates (though such a suggestion itself requires a leap of logic that some might find implausible), it is another thing altogether to impute to the legislature an intent to defer on constitutional matters. This is because legislatures cannot meaningfully alter the depth of constitutional scrutiny afforded its own enactments by courts. Such alteration would strike at the core of powers exercised by judicial review court. Specifically, the Supreme Court has held that legislatures do not have the ability to “limit judicial review of constitutionality” (see Amax Potash Ltd Etc v The Government of Saskatchewan, [1977] 2 SCR 576, which was rendered in the context of a division of powers case, but with comments equally applicable to Charter issues). Vavilov alludes to this limitation more specifically. It says that legislatures can only specify the standard of review “within the limits imposed by the rule of law” (Vavilov, at para 35). The Rule of Law includes “constitutional questions” which include challenges to statutes on division of powers and Charter grounds. On these questions, correctness rules the day, and the legislature’s intent is of no moment.

Is the same true for exercises of administrative discretion implicating the Charter? It should be, because the legislature cannot do indirectly what it cannot do directly. The legislature should not be able to escape the full scrutiny of the courts under the Constitution simply by delegating. An adjunct to this principle was set out in Eldridge, at para 42, in the context of Charter applicability. There, La Forest J, relying on his decision in McKinney, noted that legislatures should not be able to evade Charter responsibility by simply delegating power. While this decision was rendered in terms of Charter applicability, the same principle applies to questions of standard of review. The level of scrutiny applied by the Court should not differ depending on whether the legislature decides to delegate. Put differently, courts should not impute to the legislature an intent to alter the status quo ante of correctness review simply through the act of delegation.

Put this way, if we cannot speak of a legislative intent to defer on constitutional matters regarding statutes, the same is true on matters arising in administrative jurisdiction. Applying the Vavilov presumption to these questions would mean that we can implicitly conclude that the legislature intended deference on these constitutional matters. But for the reasons above, if we apply the same rules to administrative discretion implicating the Charter, then we cannot speak of a legislative intent on these matters either. Put simply: the legislature is constitutionally incapable of possessing an intent when it comes to the standard of review courts apply on constitutional questions, no matter the context in which the questions arise.

This leaves an important question: if the Vavilov presumption does not apply to Dore-type issues, where do these issues fit in the Vavilov framework? In my view, Doré -type questions involve the Rule of Law, warranting correctness review, as described in Vavilov. While Professor Daly notes that challenges to administrative discretion may admit of more than one answer, one must remember that we are speaking of the Constitution’s protections, not of the ability of administrators to have more lee-way in the context of their regulatory regimes. These issues are still constitutional questions that require a uniform interpretation by the courts, even if the issues arise in challenges to administrative discretion. In fact, the power of judicial review exercised in constitutional and administrative contexts derives from the same source. As Justice Beetz noted in Syndicat des employes de production du Quebec:

Furthermore, I do not see why different rules would be applied in this regard depending on whether it concerns judicial review of an administrative or quasi-judicial jurisdiction, or judicial review of legislative authority over constitutional matters. When the courts of law have to rule on the validity of a statute, so far as I know they do not ask whether Parliament or the legislature has expressly or by implication given ss. 91 and 92 of the Constitution Act, 1867 an interpretation which is not patently unreasonable. Why would they act differently in the case of judicial review of the jurisdiction of administrative tribunals? The power of review of the courts of law has the same historic basis in both cases, and in both cases it relates to the same principles, the supremacy of the Constitution or of the law, of which the courts are the guardians (at 443-444).

Putting aside the old administrative law language of “jurisdiction” and the fact that we currently accept reasonableness review on the merits, there is an overall point here the bears repeating: even if a constitutional issue arises in administrative proceedings, it is the same power of judicial review that is exercised by a court when it reviews statutes for their constitutionality. The role of the courts should be the same in each context: as guardians of the Constitution, courts must render uniform interpretations of the Charter, even in cases of administrative discretion.

Relatedly, there is also an important perspective to consider here: that of the holder of the right. How does one explain to her that her right means something different because an administrator made the decision? How does a Court conclude that the Constitution’s meaning could potentially be different—not for reasons of text, precedent, or structure—but because the procedural trappings of a case happen, fortuitously, to be different? Administrative exigency is no excuse—or at least, not a good one—to limit one’s Charter rights. (see, for more on the arbitrariness of Doré, Evan Fox-Decent and Alexander Pless, “The Charter and Administrative Law: Cross-Fertilization or Inconstancy?” in Lorne Sossin & Colleen Flood, eds, Administrative Law in Context (Toronto: Emond Montgomery, 2012) at 431).

Professor Daly might respond that the Constitution could mean different things in regulatory contexts. But this point seems to view the matter from the wrong perspective. The question is not what makes the most sense for administrators given the different contexts that they render decisions. The question, instead, is whether there is some principled reason, besides administrative exigency, for a lower standard of scrutiny to be deployed when reviewing administrative decisions under the Charter. As I’ve written before, doctrine should not “require the weakening of constitutional norms to suit the prerogative of administrative decision-making.”

***

With my remaining space, I’d like to turn to the issue of applying the reasonableness standard. Here, I agree with much of what Professor Daly says. As he notes, and as I argue in my paper, there are tensions in Vavilov’s articulation of reasonableness review (see the Conceptual Gap, at 15). I acknowledge, specifically, that aspects of Vavilov reasonableness may have a Diceyan quality to them, while other parts of Vavilov are more designed to encourage space for decision-makers to justify their decisions to the public (Vavilov, at para 14). Other aspects of Vavilov are not formalist at all—for example, the recognition that administrative justice need not look like judicial justice (Vavilov, at para 92). On this, I think there is agreement.

But this does not change the fact that there are aspects of Vavilovian review that are decidedly formalist, and which conflict with Doré on its own terms. Recall that the governing statutory scheme will be the most salient aspect of the legal context relevant to judicial review (Vavilov, at para 108), with the principles of statutory interpretation acting as necessary constraints on decision-makers. As noted above, if we transposed this requirement into the constitutional context, we would expect the Constitution—specifically, its text—to be even more fundamental than statutes, to the extent that decision-makers must always consider the Charter within their scope of discretion (Doré , at para 35; Slaight Communications, at 1077-1078). As I note in my paper:

Recall that Vavilov, in the context of legislative interpretation by administrators, asked decision-makers to focus on a number of “constraints” that would determine whether a particular decision is reasonable or not. Some of these constraints are particularly relevant to the constitutional context. For example, in the context of assessing the reasonableness of a decisionmaker’s constitutional conclusions, Vavilov’s focus on the “governing statutory scheme” could easily simply be rebranded as the governing constitutional text; precedent, in both contexts, would be relevant; and the principles of statutory interpretation emphasized in Vavilov could become the principles of constitutional interpretation in the Doré context. Additionally, the Court could impose explicit reasoning requirements on all of these constraints; where they are in play, decision-makers should reason in relation to them, just as the Court asked decision-makers to reason respecting the Vavilov constraints (The Conceptual Gap, at 26).

And more specifically, the exercise of discretion under the Charter still requires justification. This was not alluded to in Doré, and yet Vavilov centres the entire edifice of reasonableness review on this principle. Justification, for example, requires the consideration of “…the perspective of the individual or party over whom authority is being exercised” (Vavilov, at para 133). Where rights and interests are stake, one must assume that the standard must be something more than being “alive” to the Charter issues at stake, as the majority concluded in TWU. While I acknowledge that TWU was a law society case, where reasons take on a different character, I must note the dissent’s point of view in TWU. Arguably, the dissent’s comment is more in line with what Vavilov requires:

While the Benchers may not have had a duty to provide formal reasons…the rationale for deference under Doré —expertise in applying the Charter to a specific set of facts…–requires more engagement and consideration from an administrative decision-maker than simply being “alive to the issues,” whatever that may mean… (TWU, at para 294).

In sum, I continue to believe, despite Professor Daly’s strong arguments, that Doré is vulnerable to attack after Vavilov. While I would be prepared to make arguments that attack Doré head-on, there is value in comparing Vavilov to Doré. Far from emerging strengthened, I continue to hold the view that Doré requires assimilation to the Vavilov framework. But I part ways with Professor Daly on precisely how this is done.

New Paper on Doré and Vavilov

Frequent readers of this blog will know that I have written here on the subject of the propriety of Doré post-Vavilov. As many of you know, I do not believe that Doré can stand in light of Vavilov. I have now outlined more extensively why that is is, in a paper that will appear in the Dalhousie Law Journal later this year. Here is the abstract:

This paper argues that, without substantial doctrinal amendment, there is a fundamental conceptual gap between the cases of Doré and Vavilov. This is because both cases are motivated by different conceptions of administrative law. In Vavilov, the paper suggests that the Court melded together two theories of judicial review: first, a Diceyan theory based on a harmonious understanding of the principles of legislative sovereignty and the Rule of Law; and second, the imposition of a “culture of justification” for administrative decision-makers, in which decision-makers are asked to justify their decisions to receive deference. On the other hand, Doré is motivated by a pure functionalist understanding of administrative law, in which the expertise of the decision-maker in deciding constitutional matters is emphasized. While not total opposites, the theories are also not entirely complementary, such that they lead to different doctrinal prescriptions. The paper explores the doctrinal gap, and suggests two ways in which it might be bridged. First, Doré might be recalibrated to bifurcate the standard of review analysis, so that decisions implicating the scope of Charter rights is reviewed on a correctness standard, while the proportionality/application stage is reviewed on a reasonableness standard. Second, Vavilov’s justificatory standards might be imported into the Doré context to bridge the gap.

The paper can be accessed here.

UAlberta Pro-Life: Another Nail in the Doré Coffin?

On the Ontario Bar Association website, Teagan Markin describes and analyzes the recent UAlberta Pro-Life Case, 2020 ABCA 1. I had meant to blog on this decision when it came out, but life intervened, so I thank Markin for reminding me of the case. In the case, Watson JA employs a creative use of the Doré test, similar to how the Ontario Court of Appeal’s approach in Ferrier (which I blogged about here). Both Ferrier and UAlberta Pro-Life “bifurcate” the standard of review, so that the definition or scope of the Charter right at issue is reviewed on a correctness standard, while the right’s application in a proportionality analysis is reviewed on a reasonableness standard.

While I understand the impetus to clarify what the Court calls the “unelaborated language” of Doré (UAlberta Pro-Life, at para 166), I see bifurcation as only a medium-term solution because there are more fundamental issues between Doré and Vavilov. I actually see bifurcation as introducing more problems than it solves. It raises tricky issues about what the scope of a Charter right is versus its application; it is plainly inconsistent with Doré ; and if one takes Vavilov seriously, bifurcation arguably does not go far enough. If constitutional questions are so connected to the Rule of Law that they require consistent answers from the courts, bifurcating the standard of review is at best an intermediate solution to a more serious problem: Doré is simply inconsistent with Vavilov, on its own terms.

In this post, I explore this argument.

***

The UAlberta Pro-Life Case involved two appeals. The first appeal concerned a 2015 demonstration by the UAlberta Pro-Life group. The Pro-Life group complained to the University that counter-protests erected in response to the pro-life protest “breached the University Code of Student Behaviour” [4]. This first issue, while interesting, is not in my cross-hairs for this post.

The second issue relates to a request by the Pro-Life group for permission to hold another demonstration in early 2016. The University determined that the group would be permitted to hold the event, so long as the group agreed to defray the costs associated with security for the event, estimated to be around $17 500. The Pro-Life group “said the cost was prohibitive and amount to denial of their exercise of freedom of expression” [5].

On judicial review, the chambers judge, relying on Doré , concluded that the University decision fell within “the range of possible acceptable outcomes” [156] because even though the costs of security impacted Pro-Life’s freedom of expression, “[t]hat impact had to be balanced against other interests” [156].

For the Court of Appeal, a number of issues presented themselves, including the thorny issue of whether the Charter applies to universities [148-149]. However, for our purposes, the relevant part of the decision dealing with the standard of review and the articulation of the Doré test are most important. The Court, early in the decision, says the following:

The standard of review as to the definitional scope of a Charter right or the definitional scope of s.32 of the Charter must be correctness. These are transcendent questions of law not resting within the enabling legislation of any specific decision-maker…By comparison, for issues of fact or discretion, the reviewing court is to “tread lightly”[30].

The Court, later in the decision, went on to explain that since the chambers judge’s error in applying the Doré test (which I will address below) “was erroneous on a Constitutional legal test, it is reviewed for correctness and it is reviewable as incorrect” [169].

Why is the articulation of a constitutional test a matter for correctness review? The Court couched the answer to this question in Vavilov:

In this respect, the Supreme Court in Vavilov recently referred briefly to Doré and appeared to distinguish review of the “effect” of a judicially reviewable administrative ruling from a specific finding of unconstitutionality of a statute on the basis of Charter inconsistency. The Supreme Court said “correctness” applied to the latter. The Court, however, did not state the standard of review for “effect” cases, and did not erase the above passages from TWU 1 and TWU 2. Significantly, the Court also reinforced at para 53 and elsewhere in their reasons, that correctness review applies to any determination of law linked to respect for the rule of law name ly “questions: constitutional questions, general questions of law of central importance to the legal system as a whole and questions regarding the jurisdictional boundaries between two or more administrative bodies.” I read, therefore, Vavilov as being consistent with the approach taken here [170].

With the standard of review set out, the Court also looked at the chambers judge’s application of the Doré test. There were two problems with this test, in the Court’s eyes: first, the chambers judge failed to articulate the proper s.1 limit, and second, she failed to properly allocate the proper burden of proof. On the first issue, the Court concluded that “the limitation must, in my view, be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. Although that expression about demonstrable justification does not figure prominently in the cases from Doré onward, it is not erased from the Charter as linguistic frill” [161]. Since the chambers judge failed to ground her analysis in the language of s.1, she “applied a utilitarian approach” that failed to “apply the correct criteria” [159].

On the second issue of onus, the Court concluded that even under the Doré administrative law approach, “the onus on proving the ‘section 1 limit’ on expression freedom…should be on the state agent” [161]. This suggestion is reminiscent of both McLachlin CJC’s and Rowe J’s opinions in Trinity Western, where they suggested friendly amendments to the Doré framework. But Doré was quite unclear on this point, as a matter of first principle.

Overall, the Court chastised the Doré framework, concluding that “[w]ith respect, Doré was expressed in elastic terms after which incorrect readings of Doré exposed Charter rights and freedoms to an inadequate level of protection” [166].

***

Bifurcation is not necessarily a new way to deal with issues of Charter rights. As Professor Daly points out, it is an approach that appears in the Supreme Court’s duty to consult jurisprudence (particularly, look at Rio Tinto and Moldaver J’s opinion in Ktunaxa). Ferrier, as I’ve written about before, is also an example of this approach. One understands the impetus for the Court of Appeal’s reasoning in UAlberta Pro-Life, from both a first-principles perspective and from a Vavilov perspective. From first principles, Doré , to many, has turned out to be a way to disempower Charter rights by reference to untethered “values,” and to let the government off scot-free, escaping the traditional justification it must bear under s.1. Indeed, as noted above, this was the impetus behind McLachlin CJC’s and Rowe J’s opinions in Trinity Western. For the then-Chief Justice, bifurcation seemed on the cards, because “the scope of the guarantee of a Charter right must be given a consistent interpretation regardless of the state actor, and it is the task of courts on judicial review of a decision to ensure this” (Trinity Western, at para 116). For Rowe J, the focus on values could lead to “unpredictable reasoning” (Trinity Western, at para 171) that, one can imagine could lead to under-powered Charter rights.

As the then-Chief Justice seems to understand, reasonableness does not help the situation. It means that the initial scope of a right might be given inconsistent (but reasonable) interpretations by different decision-makers. These inconsistent interpretations could be given even more power by sloppy “values-based” reasoning that divorces Charter analysis from the actual text of Charter rights. Bifurcation solves this problem. It forces courts to give a consistent interpretation, through correctness review, on issues of the scope of Charter rights. Conceivably, such decisions transcend the scope of particular statutory objectives and contexts, and go to the force of Charter rights in the abstract. Correctness review, then, adequately guards the consistent application of the scope of particular Charter rights in different statutory contexts.

But Vavilov, as I have written before, could also support this sort of bifurcation based on the principle of consistency. Recall that while Vavilov did not squarely address the Doré framework (see Vavilov, at para 57), it did expand on what the Rule of Law requires in the context of selecting the relevant standard of review. Sometimes, to the Court, “respect for the rule of law requires courts to apply the standard of correctness for certain types of legal questions…” (Vavilov, at para 53). This is particularly so with 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).

The scope of Charter rights, as the then-Chief Justice noted in Trinity Western, requires consistency. Correctness review on the scope/definition of Charter rights would accomplish that goal, at least in theory.

But bifurcation presents two problems: both from the Doré perspective and from the perspective of Vavilov. Like it or not (and I don’t) Doré is a binding precedent of the Supreme Court. As Markin argues in her post, Doré —and most recently, Trinity Western—were largely silent on this sort of bifurcation of the standard of review. While it has been recognized that the Doré test requires two distinct steps (1) “whether the administrative decision engages the Charter by limiting Charter protections” and (2) proportionate balancing (see Trinity Western, at para 58), the Court in both Doré and Trinity Western only said that the standard of reasonableness applies to decisions taken by decision-makers that impact Charter rights (see Trinity Western at paras 56-57; Doré , at para 56-57). It did not mention bifurcation as a proper approach. Indeed, Doré was an attempt to comprehensively address this standard of review issue—indeed, it arose, because of the Court’s appraisal of a “completely revised” relationship between the Charter and administrative law (Doré , at para 30). One would have expected such a comprehensive approach to mention bifurcation if it indeed was a doctrinal solution that the Court could endorse.

This, of course, does not mean that Doré is on solid ground. Indeed, much of Vavilov can be read as a way to undermine Doré , as I wrote about here. And on this front, one could make a convincing argument that bifurcation simply does not go far enough in light of Vavilov. Vavilov says that issues involving the Constitution should be reviewed on a correctness standard. Again, it is because these questions require consistency from the courts, as courts are in the unique position of being guardians of the Constitution (see Hunter v Southam, at 155: “ Ell v Alberta, at para 23; United States v ; Kourtessis v MNR, at 90). Based on this idea, one could convincingly argue that the proportionality analysis—not just the issue of the scope of Charter rights—should also be reviewed on a correctness standard.

This is true for a few reasons. First, Doré was premised on a functional idea of expertise as a reason for deference. The idea was that, in the context of statutes under which administrative decision-makers receive power, administrative decision-makers are best suited to be able to balance the Charter values at play in light of the statutory objectives (see Doré , at paras 35, 46). Vavilov resiles from expertise as a reason for applying the reasonableness standard reflexively (Vavilov, at para 31). Now, expertise is a reason for deference, but only after reasonableness has been selected for other reasons going to legislative intent (Vavilov, at para 31). There is no warrant to impose a different standard when it comes to constitutional questions, even those that arise in statutory contexts with which decision-makers may be familiar. That is, if we do not presume expertise on run-of-the-mill, humdrum legal questions, then why should we presume it in the context of constitutional questions? My uneducated guess is that most decision-makers do not have expertise on constitutional matters, even if they arise in the context of familiar statutes. And if expertise is no longer a reason for reflexive deference, then the rug is pulled out from Doré as a matter of first-principles. Now, courts should not lessen the robustness of review based on questions of expertise. Vavilov, then, lowers the importance of functional reasons for deference.

Second, proportionality still counts as a “constitutional question” that should be subject to Vavilov’s comments about the Rule of Law. One might argue that there is a difference in kind between the scope of Charter rights and their application/balancing in the proportionality context. For one, the scope of a Charter right is a pure question of law, and application considerations are probably questions of mixed fact and law, to which we might owe deference. But there is no reason to think this strict division will hold all the time. In the first place, I am skeptical of the ability of courts to reliably decide what is an issue of “scope” and what is an issue of “application.” Indeed, constitutional challenges as against statutes largely depend on their facts—this is borne out if one looks at cases like Bedford and Carter. And yet, in statuory contexts, we apply a correctness standard (see Vavilov, at para 57). We might lessen the force of a correctness standard in respect of particular facts—ie the margin of appreciation—but that margin is not always applicable. Neither it should be in the Doré context.

All of this to say, the UAlberta Pro-Life Case is a good illustration of the ways in which courts are trying to navigate Doré post-Vavilov. As noted above, I understand the impetus behind bifurcation as a medium-term way to bridge the gap between Doré and Vavilov. But I still see fundamental strains between Doré and Vavilov that bifurcation cannot solve.

CBC v Ferrier, 2019 ONCA 1025: Considering Consideration of the Charter

Part II of a two-part series on Doré.

Yesterday, I wrote about why Doré was under stress in the aftermath of Vavilov. Today, I write about a new case out of the Court of Appeal for Ontario (per Sharpe JA) that demonstrates why Vavilov means that Doré is sitting in a tense situation. While Ferrier should not be taken as the death knell for Doré—or even an indication of such—it is an indication of the tension that Vavilov arguably introduced into the world of Doré.

In Canadian Broadcasting Corp v Ferrier, the question involved “the openness of police board hearings” [1]. Under the Police Services Act, s.35(4), subject to certain exceptions, “police services board hearings are presumptively open to the public” [3]. In other words, section 35(4) sets out the test for whether a hearing should be closed. In this case, the relevant decision-maker decided that the hearing should be closed. The CBC and others argued that the decision-maker “failed to pay adequate attention to the s.2(b) Charter right to freedom of expression by failing to require an open hearing” [4]. Specifically, the applicants argued that the so-called Dagenais/Mentuck test applied to the case: “[t]his test applies to discretionary decisions limiting freedom of the press in relation to court proceedings” [15]. The decision-maker, though, rejected the application of this test because (1) Dagenais/Mentuck apparently only applies to situations in the courtroom and (2) the relevant statute (s.35(4)) prescribed the proper test for determining whether to hold a closed hearing, and that statutory test ousted the consideration of Dagenais/Mentuck.

In addressing the standard of review, the Court was in an awkward position, because “[t]his appeal had been argued and a complete draft of these reasons had been written before the Supreme Court released its decision in [Vavilov]” [29]. Nonetheless, the Court went on to assess the standard of review under the Vavilov framework.

The main question in determining the standard of review was the proper decision under review, and the authority under which the decision was made. Sharpe JA concluded that the relevant decision was whether the Dagenais/Mentuck standard applied [32-33]. In other words, the relevant decision under review was the decision-maker’s refusal to apply the Dagenais/Mentuck test in view of the s.35(4) statutory test. To Sharpe JA, this was a decision reviewable on a correctness standard [33]. In drawing this conclusion, Sharpe JA drew a distinction (on standard of review) between cases where a Charter right was considered by a decision-maker and cases (as here) where the Charter right was expressly not considered:

[34] If the Charter rights are considered by the administrative decision maker, the standard of reasonableness will ordinarily apply.

[35] On the other hand, the refusal or failure to consider an applicable Charter right should, in my opinion, attract a correctness standard of review. As the Supreme Court explained in Dunsmuir, at para. 60, citing Toronto (City) v. C.U.P.E., Local 79, 2003 SCC 63, [2003] 3 S.C.R. 77, at para. 62: “where the question at issue is one of general law ‘that is both of central importance to the legal system as a whole and outside the adjudicator’s specialized area of expertise’ … uniform and consistent” answers are required. See also Alberta (Information and Privacy Commissioner) v. University of Calgary, 2016 SCC 53, [2016] 2 S.C.R. 555, at paras. 20-21. This is confirmed by Vavilov, at para. 17: “[T]he presumption of reasonableness review will be rebutted…where the rule of law requires that the standard of correctness be applied. This will be the case for certain categories of questions, namely constitutional questions, general questions of law of central importance to the legal system as a whole and questions related to the jurisdictional boundaries between two or more administrative bodies”.

[36] The s. 2(b) Charter right to freedom of expression and freedom of the press relied upon by the appellants is both a matter of central importance to the legal system and a constitutional question.

In other words, Sharpe JA’s reasoning is that decisions whether to consider Charter rights at all are reviewable on a correctness standard, because such decisions are both constitutional questions and questions of central importance to the legal system, under the Vavilov framework. But once an administrator has considered Charter rights, the consideration of those rights are subject to a reasonableness standard.

Two things are notable about this distinction, taking into account pre-Vavilov precedent. First, prior to Vavilov, the decision of whether Charter rights had to be considered on the facts was not prescribed a specific standard of review by the Supreme Court, and otherwise was subject to a reasonableness standard in the Federal Courts. In Singh, for example, the Federal Court of Appeal was asked to determine whether s.110(4) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act [IRPA], which prescribes the conditions under which new evidence can be admitted in an appeal to the Refugee Appeal Division [RAD] exhaustively prescribed the conditions under which evidence could be admitted. An intervenor argued, for example, that “the RAD had to go beyond the requirements set out in s.110(4) and was obligated to proceed with a [Doré analysis].” [56]. However, the Court concluded (1) that s.110(4) exhaustively set out the conditions under which new evidence could be admitted, vitiating the need for a Doré analysis [62] and (2) even taking account of the fact that this argument was made, the Court ultimately concluded that the interpretation of a provision such as s.110(4) is reviewable on a standard of reasonableness [29]. This is because, among other things, the question was “not a question of law of central importance to the legal system as a whole…[23].

It is true, as Professor Daly points out on Twitter, that Sharpe JA’s approach is substantially similar to the approach adopted by the Supreme Court with respect to the duty to consult, as noted in Rio Tinto. There, a distinction was drawn between cases where the decision-maker decides whether it must consider the duty to consult (reviewable on a correctness standard) and cases where the decision-maker has consulted and it is up to the court to assess the adequacy of the consultation (reviewed on a reasonableness standard). More broadly, the distinction here—similar to the one drawn by Sharpe JA—is based on a traditional sort of test for standard of review: questions of law (existence of legal duty) are reviewable on a correctness standard; questions of mixed fact and law are reviewable on a reasonableness standard.

But the analogy to duty to consult is not entirely convincing. For one, in some cases, a duty to consult may not need to be considered by an administrative decision-maker—since the enabling statute may not mandate it (see Rio Tinto, at para 67). But Doré speaks in far more reaching terms: “Rather, administrative decisions are always required to consider fundamental values” (Doré, at para 35, emphasis in original). Following this line of thinking, Doré and its progeny have not adopted the distinction between power to consider a fundamental right and the consideration of that right, for the purposes of the standard of review (though I note Moldaver J’s reasons in Ktunaxa as approaching this bifurcated analysis). As noted above, in Singh, whether a decision-maker must address the Charter is a matter of statutory interpretation, normally reviewable on the standard of reasonableness (see also Deri, at the Federal Court, on this note).

This distinction, then, in the Charter context is not common. Indeed, Sharpe JA seems to imply that Vavilov broadened the categories of cases in which correctness review would apply. The distinction drawn by Sharpe JA seems to give broader effect to the Dunsmuir correctness categories of “central questions” and “constitutional issues.” Take the central questions category. Following Singh, the question of whether a statute ousts the need to consider judicially-constructed tests was not a “central question” of importance to the legal system. But now, given Vavilov’s comments on the Rule of Law and the need for determinate final answers on important issues of legal interpretation (Vavilov, at para 53), it appears that there is extra grist for the mill for judges to expand the scope of the category, despite the Vavilov majority’s warnings otherwise (see Vavilov, para 61). Moreover, on the scope of constitutional questions, and on Doré’s own holding, a distinction was not drawn between cases where a Charter argument was considered versus cases where they were not considered but should have been. The Court has never explicitly endorsed this proposition with reference to Charter rights. Doré, instead, simply says that a decision which balances the Charter value with the statutory objective is reasonable (Doré, at para 58). Ipso facto, a decision which does not will be unreasonable, and so a decision that fails to even take account of a Charter value will be unreasonable (for an example, see Abdi, at para 30 ). But this was not a question of correctness, at least on Doré’s standard. Sharpe JA takes a different approach, relying on Vavilov.

One could make a convincing argument, then, that Vavilov changes the pre-Vavilov state of affairs as it applies to Doré and other categories of correctness review. In other words, Ferrier eats into Doré’s domain.

That is one point, in itself. But another is that, in my view, Sharpe JA does not take the point far enough, and in failing to do so, creates a distinction that is unworkable. In truth, the distinction between cases where Charter rights were considered and those where they were not is not a strong one on which to rest a difference in the standard of review. This is because of what Vavilov says at paras 55, 57:

Questions regarding the division of powers between Parliament and the provinces, the relationship between the legislature and the other branches of the state, the scope of Aboriginal and treaty rights under s. 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, and other constitutional matters require a final and determinate answer from the courts. Therefore, the standard of correctness must continue to be applied in reviewing such questions: Dunsmuir, para. 58; Westcoast Energy Inc. v. Canada (National Energy Board), 1998 CanLII 813 (SCC), [1998] 1 S.C.R. 322.

[…]

The constitutional authority to act must have determinate, defined and consistent limits, which necessitates the application of the correctness standard.

In other words, “the constitutional authority to act”—whether Charter values are considered or not—necessitates the application of the correctness standard. More broadly, the application of the correctness standard in these circumstances “respects the unique role of the judiciary in interpreting the Constitution and ensures that courts are able to provide the last word on question for which the rule of law requires consistency and for which a final and determinate answer is necessary” (Vavilov, at para 53). In my view, this is true when a court analyzes whether a decision maker was required to consider Charter rights, and in cases where the decision-maker actually analyzed the Charter rights. In both cases, there is a substantial constitutional component to the analysis which implicates the need for the court to have the final say on the law: the court is required in both cases to assess the application and scope of constitutional rights. Even when considered in respect of facts or proportionality analysis, a court is still required to construe the scope of constitutional rights.

Some might argue with my position here. For example, as I mentioned in my previous post, Vavilov explicitly does not overturn Doré, and also does not explicitly mention questions of the “Charter” falling within the scope of its comments on “constitutional questions.” But it would be hard to distinguish between these cases. In other words, what is the compelling justification to treat Charter cases separately from all other questions of constitutional law, and going a step further, what is the justification for distinguishing cases where the Charter was considered versus where it was not? Whie one might say that the factual component changes things, in both cases, involving considering whether Charter values arise because of a relationship to a statute and cases where Charter values were considered, it is the court’s task to delineate the scope of constitutional rights. This is true in both the abstract and as applied to proportionality analysis. If this is true, the distinction, then, falls apart.

Ferrier, then, is an interesting case study in how Vavilov interacts with Doré. And at least on first blush, the interaction is tense.

After Vavilov, Doré is Under Stress

Part I of a two-part series on Doré

**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 19^th 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.

Day 12: Mark Mancini

Here are my three favourite dissents at the Supreme Court of Canada. All of my dissents are united by a focus on the Rule of Law and constitutionalism, traditionally understood. In other words, they prioritize constitutional text over abstract values; and they focus particularly on the hierarchy of laws under which the Constitution>statutes>the common law. These might be considered “boring” themes on which to base my dissents, but to my mind, these structural arrangements are fundamental to law in Canada. These dissents focus on the majority’s subversion or misapplication of these fundamental structural constraints.

Law Society of British Columbia v Trinity Western University, 2018 SCC 32

The TWU decision was one of the most anticipated Supreme Court decisions in 2018. My favourite aspect of this dissent, penned by Brown and Côté JJ, was the rigorous attack on Doré/Loyola as an organizing framework to analyze the constitutional claims in TWU. The dissent admirably showed why these cases are inconsistent with the Rule of Law and constitutionalism.

The Doré/Loyola approach to assessing the constitutionality of decisions engaging Charter rights asks decision-makers to balance Charter values engaged on particular facts with statutory objectives arising in a statutory framework. Courts are supposed to defer to the decision-maker’s balancing of values and objectives. But the slippery nature of Doré/Loyola has been subject to widespread criticism (see my particular criticisms here). Brown and Côté JJ also pointed out the widespread problems with the Doré/Loyola framework: see para 302. But the majority largely ignored these problems, and the suggestion by interveners that Doré/Loyola were unworkable. In a laughably weak paragraph, the majority simply stated that Doré and Loyola are binding precedents [59], without any attempt to justify the approach from first principles.

Brown and Côté JJ’s dissenting opinion admirably dealt with the problems with the Doré/Loyola framework head on. First, the dissent stated that there is no pressing justification for a separate analytical track when speaking of administrative decisions, particularly because the traditional Oakes test is “already context-specific” [302]. Second, the dissent noted that Doré and Loyola permit statutory objectives to trump Charter rights—but such a situation is completely unjustified from the perspective of the Rule of Law and constitutionalism, under which the Constitution trumps potentially unconstitutional statutory objectives, subject only to reasonable limits under s.1—not statutory objectives writ large [305]. Finally, the majority’s navel-gazing with regards to Charter values received the dissent’s ire: these values—as opposed to Charter rights—do not receive constitutional protection [307], and should not because they are not law. Since they are “unsourced,” they can be “entirely the product of the idiosyncrasies of the judicial mind that pronounces them to be so” [308].

Brown and Côté JJ’s dissenting reasons sound in the Rule of Law and constitutionalism. Under Doré, as Brown and Côté JJ note, the traditional hierarchy of laws is perverted. The use of statutory objectives to moor the analysis means that rights can be infringed insofar as a decision limiting those rights is consistent with an enabling statute. This reverses how we typically understand constitutionalism. Under a system based on the Constitution, once a decision is found to limit a constitutional right, that decision is void insofar as it infringes the Constitution—statutes cannot save a decision that infringe the Constitution [305]. True, infringements of Charter rights can be justified under the Oakes test. But it is not only every statutory objective and means that are worthy of the Oakes imprimatur. Yet under Doré, “Charter rights are guaranteed only so far as they are consistent with the objectives of the enabling statute” [305].

More seriously, the use of Charter values allows for potential judicial expansion of rights beyond the text of the Constitution—that which is enacted by the people through democratic processes. As Brown and Côté JJ persuasively note, “values” lack doctrinal rigour, permitting judges to define rights as they see fit. This perverts the relationship that courts should have to constitutional text. The relationship is that of an interpreter, not a creator. Constitutionalism is as much about control on elected representatives as it is on courts, who are supposed to faithfully elucidate the existing Constitution, not create a new one.

Saskatchewan Federation of Labour v Saskatchewan, 2015 SCC 4

At issue in the SFL case was a prohibition on striking interfered with s.2(d) of the Charter, protecting the freedom of association. The majority (Abella J) concluded that s.2(d) incorporated a right to strike, despite the fact that the Court had previously held that the right to strike is not constitutionally entrenched in Canada. While there had been changes in the s.2(d) jurisprudence in the intervening years, those changes, in my view, fell far short of endorsing a free-standing right to strike.

Yet the majority did so, powered by the reasoning that “It seems to me to be the time to [the right to strike] constitutional benediction.” This reasoning—a weak, unsupported assertion of judicial power—was the target of Rothstein and Wagner JJ’s partial dissent.

The dissent in SFL focused on two problems with the majority’s acceptance of a right to strike. First, it noted that constitutionalizing a right to strike upsets the prerogatives of the legislature and the executive, the branches constitutionality assigned to “balance competing tensions in making policy decisions” [115]. As the dissent posits, “Governments, not courts, are charged with adapting legislation to changing circumstances in order to achieve a balance between the interests of employers, employees, and the public” [120]. But secondly, to the dissent, the majority’s approach was inconsistent with existing precedent of the Court, undermining certainty in the law [137, 139].

Rothstein and Wagner JJ’s dissent is so powerful because it resists the judicial usurpation (“benediction”) evident in the majority reasons. It asserts that the text of the Constitution, not judicial predilections or results-oriented reasoning, should be the starting point of constitutional analysis. It refers to the importance of precedent as the bedrock of the legal system; precedent which the majority overrules for no convincing reason. It asserts that the court cannot usurp the power of the legislature in an area traditionally assigned to political channels. These are reminders that courts should keep in mind in the era of Charter adjudication.

Edmonton (City) v Edmonton East (Capilano) Shopping Centres Ltd., 2016 SCC 47

Dissents are sometimes valuable because they have the potential to tell the future. Sometimes it takes a long time for a dissent to find majority support. But in Edmonton East, at least part of Brown and Côté JJ’s dissent received majority support in the Supreme Court’s recent administrative law re-do, Vavilov.

The controversy in Edmonton East centred around the selection of the standard of review. The majority (Karakatsanis J) ultimately concluded that a presumption of reasonableness review should govern, based on existing precedent. That presumption was justified by (1) the legislative choice to delegate in the first place [22] and (2) expertise, which “inheres in a tribunal itself as an institution…” [33] and (3) access to justice [22]. But Karakatsanis J, in her reasons, actually ended up strengthening the presumption of reasonableness, by rejecting the idea that a contextual analysis should not often rebut the presumption of reasonableness [35], and the idea that statutory rights of appeal cannot rebut the presumption of reasonableness [28].

Brown and Côté JJ took significant issue with all of this. In their view, the existence of a statutory right of appeal on certain questions of law and jurisdiction led to the conclusion in this case that correctness was the applicable standard [78]. To Brown and Cote JJ, statutory rights of appeal could be a signal that the legislature intended more intrusive review [73]. And the dissent was also reticent about the majority’s broad claims of expertise [83].

Brown and Côté JJ’s dissent is justified in principle. The selection of the standard of review is a matter of determining what the legislature meant when it delegated power to a decision-maker. This is because administrative actors are vested with powers only so far as statute provides, and it is for the legislature to prescribe the degree of deference courts must afford decision-makers [85]. This means that courts must carefully parse the delegation of authority to decision-makers, and the statutory context, to determine the degree of deference owed: statutory rights of appeal play a role in this task, as they signal that legislatures intended courts to interfere with a lower administrative decision as it would in any normal appeal. And expertise is not a good justification for a broad-based presumption of expertise, because legislatures may sometimes delegate to a non-expert decision-maker, and a decision-maker might not be expert on all the questions that come before it [85].

All of this, as noted above, was recognized by the Court’s recent opinion in Vavilov. Statutory rights of appeal now serve as valid legislative signals that correctness applies, on questions of law. Expertise is no longer a valid consideration in determining the standard of review. Brown and Côté JJ foretold the future, then, in their Edmonton East dissent.

More Charter Values Nonsense

When will this end?

Doré, that bedeviling case that held that administrators must take into account “Charter values” when exercising discretion, continues to trouble lower courts. This is not only true on a theoretical level—I still have yet to hear a convincing explanation of what a Charter value actually is—but on the level of applicability. Courts are struggling with the following question: should Charter values apply in the administrative law context whenever a decision-maker interprets a statute, even if there is no ambiguity or discretion? For reasons that I will explain, this distinction between statutory interpretation and discretion is more of an illusion. In administrative law, discretion exists when statutes are ambiguous. Therefore, if one must have regard to Charter values, it should only be in the context of a pure exercise of discretion, where an administrator has first concluded that a statute is truly ambiguous and therefore an administrator has room to maneuver. Where legislation is clear, decision-makers must apply it, unless there is a direct constitutional challenge to the legislation before the decision-maker, and the decision-maker has the power to consider the challenge under the Martin line of cases. If there is any law to apply—ie if the statute is clear after a review of the canons of interpretation—then Charter values have no place in the analysis.

Let’s start with the basics. The hornbook law answer to the problem says that courts—and by logical extension, inferior tribunals—can only take into account Charter values in cases of genuine statutory ambiguity, where this is discretion at play (see Bell ExpressVu, at para 28). Where legislation is clear, administrators should apply that legislation absent a direct constitutional argument raised by an applicant where the decision-maker has power to decide constitutional questions (Singh, at paras 62-63). And yet, the Supreme Court and other courts have sometimes said otherwise, relying on the line in Doré that decision-makers must always exercise their authority in accordance with Charter values (Doré, at para 35), even in absence of ambiguity. Take R v Clarke, where the Court seemed to suggest that administrative interpretations of law are always subject to a consideration of Charter values, even in absence of ambiguity:

Only in the administrative law context is ambiguity not the divining rod that attracts Charter values. Instead, administrative law decision-makers “must act consistently with the values underlying the grant of discretion, including Charter values” (Doré, at para. 24). The issue in the administrative context therefore, is not whether the statutory language is so ambiguous as to engage Charter values, it is whether the exercise of discretion by the administrative decision-maker unreasonably limits the Charter protections in light of the legislative objective of the statutory scheme.

This approach was followed by the Court of Appeal for Ontario in Taylor-Baptiste, and most recently by the Ontario Superior Court in Ontario Nurses Association. There, the court chastised a tribunal for failing to consider Charter values, even when the Tribunal found that the statute at hand was not ambiguous and where the court did not impugn this legal finding

So we have two lines of cases. One line of cases presents the defensible, hornbook law version of the hierarchy of laws, under which laws apply to all—including administrative decision-makers. The other line of cases permits decision-makers to use Charter values before determining whether the statute is ambiguous using the ordinary tools of interpretation, potentially changing what the legislature meant to say on an ordinary meaning of the text in service to some abstract consistency with a Charter “value.”

The distinction between administrative law discretion and statutory interpretation is really just two different points on a continuum. In the context of administrative law, saying that there is “discretion” and that the statute is “ambiguous” are slightly different ways of getting at the same concept. That concept is the idea that the statute cabins the interpretive movements of the administrator. Sometimes statutes will be written in ambiguous or broad terms, permitting discretion. There, Charter values should be fair game. But otherwise, if there is any law to apply at all, Charter values have no role to play.

It should therefore be obvious that this second line of cases is grossly—and dangerously—mistaken. These cases permit Charter values to enter the fray where the statute is not ambiguous (ie) at the first-order interpretive question stage of the analysis. The basic problem can be divided into two categories: (1) the effect of an administrative decision invoking Charter values on the hierarchy of laws and (2) the pernicious consequences of permitting decision-makers to use Charter values in the context of statutory interpretation.

Consider the first problem. The hierarchy of laws might be regarded as a quaint subtlety in today’s world of law, but it remains the bedrock to the Rule of Law. The idea is simple: absent constitutional objection, legislation binds (for a discussion of the continued relevance of this simple maxim, see Justice Stratas’ opinion in Hillier). A statute that is clear creates no discretion; upon first impression, an administrator interpreting a statute must simply apply the statute after determining its meaning using all the permissible tools of textual interpretation. This is because the legislature is the authoritative writer of laws, and those operating under the statutes the legislature promulgates must apply those statutes.

When there is ambiguity, discretion enters the fray. This is because the legislature has delegated to the decision-maker but has not said with specificity what law the decision-maker must apply. Such a finding of ambiguity should only happen after a consideration of all the normal tools of interpretation. At that point, BellExpressVu is a logical way to view the problem: decision-makers and courts can take account of Charter values, so that statutes in ambiguity are interpreted in pari materia with the Charter. This itself is an important canon of interpretation. Laws should be interpreted as a consistent whole, especially where the legislature has not specified what law to apply.

How would this work in the context of a concrete case? In Singh, for example, the problem was whether there was discretion for the Refugee Appeal Division (RAD) in interpreting whether to admit new evidence under s.110(4) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Section 110(4) contains explicit conditions for the admissibility of evidence. But an intervener made the argument that “the values protected by s.7 of the Charter must enter the interpretation and application of s.110(4) of the IRPA and even lead to the admissibility of new evidence that does not meet the explicit requirements of this provision” (see para 58). The Court rejected this argument because “an administrative decision-maker’s obligation to enforce Charter values arises only if it is exercising statutory discretion” (Doré, at para 55; Singh, at para 62). Since s.110(4) was not written in an “ambiguous manner,” Charter values could not enter the fray. And this is because of the hierarchy of laws: “[i]t is up to Parliament to amend legislation that has been declared unconstitutional so as to ensure compliance with the fundamental law of the land” (Singh, at para 62).

Doré itself involved a much more discretion-laden case, where the question was whether a lawyer’s conduct violated the sparse terms of a rule of professional conduct which simply required lawyers to act with “objectivity, moderation, and dignity.” Here, there is some ambiguity. This is not a statutory recipe, as s.110(4) is. Rather, it permits some discretion in the administrative decision-maker to decide whether particular conduct violates the rule. As such, Doré is a case where there arguably is ambiguity, in contrast to Singh. That said, were I on the Supreme Court, I would have ultimately held that the statutory text could be interpreted in absence of Charter values.

Other cases will be closer to the line. But what should not be permitted is the use of Charter values in absence of ambiguity, like in the Ontario Nurses Association case. By forcing this sort of analysis, courts enable decision-makers to change the clear meaning of statutes in order to accord with abstract Charter values, even when those values are not clear and the legislation was not written in this manner. The answer in such a case is for someone to raise a direct constitutional challenge to the legislation, either before the decision-maker or before a court. Otherwise, administrative decision-makers have no power to rewrite statutes to conform with Charter values—not necessarily coextensive with the Charter’s text—because to do so permits the decision-maker to co-opt the legislative role.

This leads into the second problem. The use of Charter values in statutory interpretation could lead to mass unpredictability in the application of law. First, this is because Charter values remain undefined. No one can tell whether a Charter value is co-extensive with the text of the Charter or not. No one can tell if there are Charter values that exist in addition to Charter rights. No one can tell the level of abstraction at which Charter values must be stated. While I have previously noted that Charter values are simply being deployed as if they were co-extensive with existing Charter rights, this need not be the case, given the ambiguity in how the Supreme Court has defined Charter values.

And this is the problem. Charter values are potentially so abstract that they provide a wishing-well of material for inexpert administrative decision-makers to mould clear statutory text in favour of their preferred policy outcomes. This is positively dangerous, and the mere possibility of it should be avoided by courts. What’s more, the invocation of Charter values in this way could lead to different findings of “inconsistency” with Charter values across the mass of administrative decision-makers, raising the prospect of palm-tree justice. In other words, it might simply depend on the decision-maker you draw as to whether a statute will be interpreted in accordance with “Charter values”; what such an interpretation would mean for your case; and what “value” would even be invoked in the first place.

Much of constitutional interpretation should exist to prevent such outcomes. Doctrinal rules should be developed to limit the discretion of judges and decision-makers to depart from the hierarchy of laws; or at the very least, rules should mandate that reasoned explanations be given for such departures. This is even more true in the context of the administrative state, where the mass of decision-makers exercising authority is so divergent that it is difficult to control as a matter of law. But the Charter values framework consists of no rules to control these decision-makers. It is simply unprincipled balancing under the guise of law. It is the realm of philosophers rather than lawyers and courts.

It’s Happening Here Too

Canadians need to heed David Bernstein’s warning about administrative decision-makers’ disregard of constitutional rights

A very interesting article by David E. Bernstein, “Anti-Discrimination Laws and the Administrative State: A Skeptic’s Look at Administrative Constitutionalism” has recently been published in the Notre Dame Law Review. Professor Bernstein cautions against allowing administrative decision-makers to pursue egalitarian goals unchecked by judicial supervision, because this pursuit often tramples over constitutional guarantees, especially freedom of speech. It is a compelling warning, and deserves the interest of Canadian readers, because the problems Professor Bernstein identifies afflict Canadian law. Indeed, much of his argument applies to the administrative enforcement of other statutes, not only anti-discrimination ones.

Professor Bernstein takes aim at the view, which he attributes to a significant number of American scholars, that administrative decision-makers both do and ought to play a very significant role in defining the scope and content of constitutional protections for certain fundamental rights. This view, “administrative constitutionalism”, rests on a number of arguments. Its supporters think that administrative decision-making “is more transparent than” the judicial sort, that administrators “are more accountable to public opinion than are courts”, and that they bring their expertise to bear on the application of constitutional standards to particular regulatory schemes. (1384) Professor Bernstein provides a number of examples of administrative decision-makers “aggressively enforcing antidiscrimination laws at the expense of constitutional protections for freedom of expression and guarantees of due process of law”, (1386) sometimes in defiance of relevant Supreme Court precedent and political direction. These will be of considerable interest to readers who follow American legal and political developments.

But what is more interesting from a parochial Canadian perspective is Professor Bernstein’s analysis of the situation ― his explanation for why administrative decision-makers tend to apply the law in a way furthers their statutory mission at the expense of the constitutional rights of those subject to their decisions. The explanation is partly institutional, and partly ideological.

The first institutional fact that contributes to administrative disregard of constitutional rights, according to Professor Bernstein, is that administrative decision-makers “maximize their power and budget”, and secure “political support, by expanding the scope of the laws they enforce”. (1401) Constitutional limits to this expansion are brushed aside. Second, a purposivist approach to statutory interpretation “practically invites agencies to find and even create ambiguities so that they can interpret statutes broadly”. (1402) In doing so, administrative decision-makers see themselves as accomplishing legislative goals, and ignore the compromises that may have been involved in the enactment of their enabling legislation. Third, administrative “agencies tend to attract employees who are committed to the agency’s regulatory mission” (1403) and want to expand their own power to, as they see it, do good. While some instances of regulatory overreach invite pushback from those subject to the regulation, this is generally not the case when it comes to “antidiscrimination regulation”, in part because “many businesses hesitate to publicly oppose” this regulation “because of the negative public relations implications”. (1403) Fourth and last, administrative decision-makers “do not see enforcing constitutional constraints on their authority as their job”. (1404) The courts themselves are partly to blame for this, because they often discourage the bureaucrats from looking to the constitution. But, for their part, supporters of “administrative constitutionalism” positively encourage administrative decision-makers to treat constitutional constraints as no more than a factor, among others, to take into account or to reject.

As for ideological concerns, they have to do with the fact that “conflicts between freedom of expression on the one hand, and restrictions on discrimination by private actors on the other, are conflicts between a
constitutional right and a statutory privilege”. (1406) As a matter of orthodox law the former ought to prevail, but for those “who believe that protecting vulnerable groups from discrimination should be at the heart of our legal and political system”, (1406) such an outcome would be wrong. They are accordingly inclined to discount constitutional concerns, or to seek to re-balance them by appealing to “the notion that the ‘constitutional value’ of antidiscrimination should trump First Amendment limitations on government regulation”. (1407) These views are prevalent not only in the legal academy, but also among activists ― and their ideological allies among the administrative decision-makers in charge of enforcing anti-discrimination laws. The fact that “[a]t the state and local level” these decision-makers are often

known as ‘human rights commissions’ … suggest[s] that the right to be free from private discrimination is at least as valuable as other rights, including constitutional rights. Indeed, the phrase ‘human rights’ suggests a superiority over mere textually supported constitutional rights. (1408)

So why, Professor Bernstein asks, don’t the courts do something about administrative decision-makers run amok? After all, the courts ― at least “generalist courts” ― “do not share mission-driven agencies’ tunnel vision, i.e., the latter’s devotion to its statutory mission at the expense of
other considerations”. (1410) But the administrative state is often able to escape scrutiny by using settlements or ostensibly “soft” forms of regulation that are not subject to judicial review. Professor Bernstein argues that courts should engage in review of administrative action more often, and that they ought to be less deferential when they do so. He also suggests possible institutional reforms, notably “to establish constitutional watchdog offices devoted to protecting constitutional rights from
[administrative] overreach”, (1413) whether within individual administrative entities or for the government as a whole.

Canadian readers probably do not need me to tell them that the issues Professor Bernstein describes arise with at least as much, and probably more, urgency in Canada. After all, although it rests on foundations that are partly different from those of its American counterpart, and goes by a different name, administrative constitutionalism is the law of the land in Canada, whenever a court is minded to follow the precedent set in Doré v Barreau du Québec, 2012 SCC 12, [2012] 1 SCR 395. In Doré, the Supreme Court held that, given their alleged expertise in applying constitutional “values” in the context of specific statutory schemes, administrative decision-makers are entitled to judicial deference, even in cases where the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is implicated. Whether an administrative decision gives effect to constitutional “values” ― not even rights ― as fully as possible in light of the statutory objectives is to be assessed on a standard of reasonableness. The Supreme Court also confirmed that reasonableness is the presumptive standard of review applicable to the decisions of anti-discrimination tribunals, in Canada (Canadian Human Rights Commission) v. Canada (Attorney General), 2018 SCC 31, [2018] 2 SCR 230 (although this was not a Charter case).

Admittedly, the Supreme Court hasn’t always been inclined to do so, occasionally simply ignoring Doré. But its latest engagement with administrative interference with constitutional rights, in Law Society of British Columbia v Trinity Western University, 2018 SCC 32, [2018] 2 SCR 293, reiterated the applicability of the Doré framework, although it is worth pointing out that the Court’s majority insisted that this wasn’t supposed to be “a weak or watered-down version of proportionality”. [80] Still, the majority wrote that

Doré’s approach recognizes that an administrative decision-maker, exercising a discretionary power under his or her home statute, typically brings expertise to the balancing of a Charter protection with the statutory objectives at stake … Consequently, the decision-maker is generally in the best position to weigh the Charter protections with his or her statutory mandate in light of the specific facts of the case … It follows that deference is warranted when a reviewing court is determining whether the decision reflects a proportionate balance. [79; references omitted]

Professor Bernstein’s article helps us identify the folly of this approach. Despite the claims to the contrary of Justice Abella (the author of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Doré and the most strident defender of “administrative constitutionalism”, most recently in Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness) v Chhina, 2019 SCC 29) and her colleagues, administrative decision-makers are unlikely to take the constitution, or even constitutional “values”, seriously at all. Granted, unlike their American counterparts, Canadian courts do not discourage bureaucrats from taking the Charter into account. Justice Abella, in particular, exhorts them to do so. But such exhortation is unlikely to mean much, compared with the much more concrete incentives Professor Bernstein identifies.

Canadian bureaucrats, no less than their American colleagues, want to expand their power and to advance their and their allies’ ideological goals. The seemingly expanding efforts of human rights bureaucracies or other administrative decision-makers (such as the former benchers of the former Law Society of Upper Canada) to police speech in the name of equality are an illustration of these twin tendencies. And while there has been pushback against the Law Society’s demand that lawyers “promote equality, diversity, and inclusion”, culminating in the election of a plurality of benchers opposed to this imposition, the incentives, both in the private sector and, still more in, say, public educational institutions are very much on the side of tacit or even vocal endorsement of the one-way ratchet of obstensibly pro-equality agenda.

The Supreme Court’s rulings on statutory interpretation exacerbate this problem. In West Fraser Mills Ltd v British Columbia (Workers’ Compensation Appeal Tribunal), 2018 SCC 22, [2018] 1 SCR 635, the majority insisted that the statute at issue featured a “broad and unrestricted delegation[s] of power” [11] so that an administrative decision-maker could pursue its purposes; in TWU, the majority also spoke of a statutory objective “stated in the broadest possible terms”. [33] (West Fraser, to be sure, was not a case implicating constitutional rights. TWU was such a case, however, and their logic is much the same.) In both cases, as I explained respectively here and here, the majority gave no effect to statutory language suggesting that the administrative decision-makers’ powers were not, in fact, unlimited, to which dissents sought to draw its attention. In West Fraser, the majority opinion disparaged attention to such details as “formalistic”. [18] As Professor Bernstein points out, when empowered to pursue expansively defined statutory missions, administrative decision-makers will be unlikely to pay much heed to constitutional concerns. Indeed, TWU offers a perfect illustration of this, since the Supreme Court ended up having to make up the reasons that supposedly justified the administrative decisions at issue.

What Professor Bernstein terms “ideological” factors operate in Canada too. Here too, the value of non-discrimination in the private sphere, branded as a “human right” by federal and provincial legislation alike is held to prevail over such constitutional concerns as freedom of expression and freedom of conscience. The TWU majority spoke of “shared values”, notably non-discrimination, as a valid reason for limiting constitutional rights, despite the fact that the Charter explicitly provides that it does not expand the law-making powers of legislatures or their creatures in the administrative state.

Like Professor Bernstein, I will conclude with an appeal for greater judicial scrutiny of administrative decisions that implicate constitutional rights. Judges ought to realize that administrative decision-makers have no particular incentive to be mindful of the constitution, and real incentives to disregard it. Even when they act in good faith, bureaucrats suffer from a single-minded, excessive focus on their statutory missions, real or assumed, that is bound to divert their attention from constitutional rules that ought to be paramount for all those who exercise public power, but in reality matter primarily to the courts ― if they matter to anyone.

To be clear, the issue is not only with the Doré framework ― though this is the most obvious way in which excessive and unwarranted deference is given to administrative decision-makers when they decide Charter questions. The Doré framework must go, the sooner the better, but this is not enough. The idea that “values” are an adequate substitute for law, whether as a source of constitutional guarantees or of administrative powers, must go along with the Doré framework, to which it is closely linked. And the Supreme Court’s approach to statutory interpretation, and in particular its willingness to countenance supposedly “unrestricted delegations” of power to administrative decision-makers, even if this requires disregarding more circumscribed statutory language, must go too. This, in turn, may require an end of the Court’s fascination with administrative expertise and its pro-regulatory bias.

This is, admittedly, a very ambitious programme. But, as Professor Bernstein shows, it is on that must be attempted if constitutional constraints are to be meaningful in the administrative state. “Administrative constitutionalism” is no substitute for the real thing. This is precisely why its supporters, who are not willing to accept constraints on what they believe is the bureaucracy’s power to do good, advocate for it. This is why we must reject it.