Tag: POGG

Rethinking Peace, Order, and Good Government in the Canadian Constitution

This post is written by Brian Bird.

The United States has life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. France has liberté, égalité, fraternité. What is the calling card of the Canadian Constitution? It is peace, order and good government.

Apart from being a concise expression of the political philosophy that animates Canadian society, or at least the philosophy that is supposed to animate it, conventional – and I would say faulty – wisdom has developed around the quintessentially Canadian brand of constitutionalism. The prevailing understanding and analytic approach to peace, order and good government (POGG) has led us to astray with respect to this key element of our constitutional architecture.

Before identifying that prevailing (mis)understanding, let us take a look at the constitutional text. Section 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867 delineates matters over which Parliament has exclusive legislative jurisdiction – matters which, by virtue of that delineation, are off limits for the provinces.

Section 91 begins with the following words:

It shall be lawful for the Queen, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate and House of Commons, to make Laws for the Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada, in relation to all Matters not coming within the Classes of Subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces; and for greater Certainty, but not so as to restrict the Generality of the foregoing Terms of this Section, it is hereby declared that (notwithstanding anything in this Act) the exclusive Legislative Authority of the Parliament of Canada extends to all Matters coming within the Classes of Subjects next hereinafter enumerated; that is to say …

What follows this paragraph is the enumerated list of classes of subjects over which the federal government has exclusive legislative jurisdiction: criminal law, national defence, banking and so forth.

The opening words of section 91 are revealing in at least three ways.

First, the concept of POGG precedes the list of subjects that fall exclusively within federal legislative jurisdiction. I suspect many if not most jurists in Canada envision POGG as residing at the end of the list, as a residual catch-all category. On the contrary, section 91 arguably contemplates legislation for the purposes of POGG as the first and foremost responsibility of Parliament.

Second, the list of subjects that follow the opening paragraph of section 91 are expressly said to be included for “greater Certainty, but not so as to restrict the Generality of the foregoing Terms”. In other words, the enumerated list of subjects under exclusive federal jurisdiction do not diminish the ability of Parliament enact laws for POGG. The conventional wisdom among most Canadian jurists is the opposite, that the list in section 91 curtails Parliament’s power to legislate for POGG.

Third, the power of the federal government to enact laws for POGG is only available where the topic of the law does not come within the areas of exclusive provincial jurisdiction. On a strictly textual basis, then, federal laws that are enacted in the name of POGG are invalid if the substance of the legislation reflects a head of provincial power as found in section 92.

This third consideration provides additional texture to the doctrine of paramountcy, which holds that a valid federal law will prevail over a valid provincial law to the extent the two laws clash. It would seem, based on the opening words of section 91, that there is no scenario in which there will be a division of power issue raised by the coexistence of a federal law enacted for POGG and a provincial law enacted for a matter listed in section 92. Parliament cannot enact legislation for peace, order and good government if the substance of that legislation falls within exclusive provincial jurisdiction.

Having taken a closer look at the wording and structure of sections 91 and 92, it seems inescapable that the proper starting point for determining whether Parliament can legislate for POGG is whether the legislation at issue falls exclusively within provincial jurisdiction pursuant to section 92. If the legislation can only be enacted by the province, it is constitutionally impossible for the same legislation to be enacted by Parliament for the purposes of POGG. This result, however, does not exclude the possibility of the legislation being valid under a specified subject of federal jurisdiction in section 91 and that, pursuant to paramountcy, such federal legislation would prevail over conflicting provincial legislation.

To a certain extent, then, the legal principles developed by courts that govern the ability of Parliament to legislate for POGG get off on the wrong foot. As these legal principles currently stand, Parliament can enact laws for the purposes of POGG in three scenarios: to address matters of national concern, respond to emergencies, and fill gaps in the division of legislative powers.

Given the text and logic of sections 91 and 92, the analysis of the validity of a federal law purportedly enacted to promote peace, order and good government should be reworked to feature two steps. The first step is to determine whether the federal legislation engages a matter coming within the classes of subjects assigned exclusively to the provinces. If the federal legislation encroaches on provincial jurisdiction, the federal legislation is invalid unless it can otherwise be saved – for example, by recourse to the enumerated list of federal subjects in section 91.

If the legislation survives the first step, the second step – tracking the opening words of section 91 – is to determine whether Parliament has made the law “for the Peace, Order, and good Government of Canada”. This language suggests a significant amount of latitude, so long as the legislation bears some rational basis to the three concepts. If that basis exists, the law is valid federal legislation.

If the federal law does not bear a rational basis to the promotion of POGG, Parliament might still be able to validate the legislation at this step by establishing that it falls within one of the classes of subjects listed in section 91. Assuming the federal legislation somehow satisfies section 91, it should be upheld by a court unless other constitutional constraints, such as the guarantees of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, are at issue.

It is worth noting an important and, as far as I can tell, often overlooked aspect of the relationship between the list of federal classes of subjects in section 91 and the corresponding provincial list in section 92. The drafters of the Constitution Act, 1867 give us a hint of the rationale for even including a list in section 91 at all. Indeed, the collective structure of sections 91 and 92 lends itself to section 91 featuring nothing more than the general terms of the opening paragraph cited at the beginning of this post. Why did the drafters opt to go further and include specificity in the form of a federal list?

Besides a likely desire to give Parliament and the provinces a flavour of which matters fall within federal jurisdiction, the words that follow the federal list are revealing. Section 91 concludes by saying that “any Matter coming within any of the Classes of Subjects enumerated in this Section shall not be deemed to come within the Class of Matters of a local or private Nature comprised in the Enumeration of the Classes of Subjects by this Act assigned exclusively to the Legislatures of the Provinces.”

In other words, the list of federal subjects in section 91 fall outside of the subject that appears at the end of the provincial list. Section 92(16) affords the provinces exclusive jurisdiction to legislate “Generally all Matters of a merely local or private Nature in the Province”. The closing words of section 91 preclude the possibility of a province enacting a law that pertains to a federal class of subject on the basis that the substance of the provincial law happens to concern a matter of a “merely local or private Nature in the Province”. Owing to the constitutional text, the provinces cannot attempt to legislate on a factually provincial matter that concerns interest, copyrights, the postal service or any other federal subject unless the provincial law can be sustained through recourse to another subject specified in section 92.

The novel two-step analysis for POGG described above challenges the current approach to this constitutional grant of legislative jurisdiction to Parliament. Perhaps the most problematic aspect of the current approach is the absence of a robust inquiry into whether the federal law under scrutiny promotes the three ends of peace, order and good government. The current approach focuses on three other concepts: national concern, emergencies, and gaps. In my view, this approach must be refined to ensure fidelity to the constitutional text and to the brand of federalism it enshrines.

Admittedly, this revamp of the POGG analysis may not yield different results in certain cases that have already ruled on legislation through the lens of this this constitutional provision. In the most recent Supreme Court ruling where POGG took centre stage, the majority’s opinion in References re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act – an opinion that affirmed the federally enacted price on greenhouse gas pollution via the national concern branch – may also hold water under the novel approach. There are good reasons to say that the power to enact this law does not belong exclusively to the provinces (step one). And laws that seek to protect the environment – and by extension basic human welfare – serve the peace, order and good government of Canada (step two).

That said, there is also good reason to believe that recalibrating the POGG analysis may lead to different results in future cases. The concepts of peace, order and good government qualitatively differ from the concepts of national concern, emergencies and gaps. It seems intuitive to say that the former concepts are, in a variety of ways, broader than the latter. In short, it may be that the current approach to POGG shortchanges this grant of federal legislative jurisdiction.

Indeed, several existing federal statutes are arguably POGG laws. For example, the Firearms Act, Food and Drugs Act, Privacy Act and Canadian Human Rights Act do not fit neatly within the federal list in section 91. On the current test for POGG, these statutes would not satisfy the emergency branch. They may not satisfy the national concern branch, which remains a difficult needle to thread.

While these statutes likely satisfy the “gap” branch, this outcome also reveals a problem. Saying that POGG can fill gaps in the division of powers, without more, neglects to ask if the gap being filled is a law made for the peace, order and good government of Canada. The gap branch, as it now stands, does not ask whether the federal law is concerned with peace, order and good government.

This flaw in the current POGG test seems to echo the conventional wisdom that the division of powers in Canada is “exhaustive”. Yet, based on the text of sections 91 and 92, the division of powers is not exhaustive in the way that is often thought. If the subject of a law cannot be hung on a hook within the provincial or federal lists and cannot be said to further peace, order and good government, this is a law that no legislature in Canada can enact. The division of powers presents the field of subjects that can be treated by legislation in Canada, but it is not exhaustive in the sense that legislatures can enact laws about anything and everything. The field of legislative jurisdiction in Canada has boundaries. Parliament cannot enact a statute that defines water as H3O instead of H2O. While there is no provincial head of power that impedes this law, there is also no federal head of power or POGG basis that permits such a statute. This law is, subject-wise, out of bounds.

If the current branch-based approach to POGG shortchanges this head of federal power, does Parliament in fact enjoy far more legislative latitude? The answer is likely something less than “far more latitude”. In addition to the field and boundaries just described, the provinces enjoy exclusive jurisdiction to legislate generally on all matters “of a local or private Nature”. In other words, only the provinces can enact laws for local POGG. Besides this check on federal legislative power, there is also – as noted above – constraints imposed by other constitutional instruments such as the Charter.

I finish by noting an interesting interpretive question: must federal legislation for POGG serve all three concepts contained in this clause (peace, order and good government)? Or, alternatively, does the federal legislation only need to serve at least one of these concepts? I leave this intriguing issue, and others that inevitably spring from a consideration of the POGG clause, for another day.

Peace, order and good government may be the most famous phrase in the Canadian Constitution. Many people say the phrase encapsulates Canada’s political culture. It is therefore surprising to discover that, in terms of how this concept lives and breathes within our constitutional atmosphere, we have fallen far short of understanding it.

Day 10: Bruce Ryder

Riding the waves of ascendant normative currents

Osgoode Hall Law School, York University

All judicial opinions are directed to adjudicating disputes and to the clarification and development of the law. Majority and dissenting opinions reach different conclusions of course; they also speak to different points in time. Dissenting opinions imagine and bring into view more distant legal futures. The dissenter hopes to have an impact on the development of the law further down the road, when anticipated injustices fostered by the majority’s position have been revealed.

Because the value of a dissent emerges over time, we ought to be cautious about lauding or condemning dissents early in their lifetimes. After a few decades have passed, we can ask: what impact has the dissent had on the development of the law? has the dissent shifted or ignited professional, judicial and scholarly debates about what the law ought to be?

The best dissents expose flaws in majority opinions and where they will take us. They deftly catch and ride the waves of ascendant normative currents in the law. They pose better questions, open new debates, and expand our critical imaginations about what a just future might look like. They invite us to dissent, not just from the majority, but also from the dissent itself. And by doing so they remind us that the best dissents are the ones that have not yet been written.

The three dissents I have chosen to highlight in the Supreme Court of Canada’s public law jurisprudence are Justice Beetz’ in the Anti-Inflation Reference, [1976] 2 SCR 373 , Justice La Forest’s in the Provincial Judges Reference, [1997] 3 SCR 3, and Justice McLachlin’s in Shell Canada Products Ltd v Vancouver (City), [1994] 1 SCR 231. Each has had an important impact on the subsequent development of the law, has advanced debates in professional and scholarly circles, and has invited us to pursue further critique beyond where the dissents themselves ventured.

Justice Beetz and the POGG Power

In his dissent in the Anti-Inflation Reference, Justice Beetz began by explaining in precise detail why the federal Anti-Inflation Act interfered with provincial jurisdiction “in a frontal way and on a large scale”. His concerns about federal interference with provincial autonomy resonated with the times – the Parti Québécois would be elected for the first time four months later. He explained why inflation was not a subject-matter that could be allocated to the national concern branch of POGG. To do so, he wrote, would “destroy the equilibrium of the constitution” since inflation lacked “a degree of unity that made it indivisible, an identity which made it distinct from provincial matters and a sufficient consistence to retain the bounds of form”.

Justice Beetz then turned to the emergency branch of POGG, describing its distinct contours, as he had with the national concern branch, with new conceptual clarity. The emergency power, he wrote, temporarily accords to Parliament all legislative powers necessary to deal with a crisis, including “concurrent and paramount jurisdiction” over matters that fall within (ordinarily exclusive) provincial jurisdiction. Resort to the emergency power, he said, “amounts to a temporary pro tanto amendment of a federal Constitution by the unilateral action of Parliament.”

The majority judges were willing to allow Parliament to rely on the emergency power despite the absence of any indication in the legislative history that it was doing so. Justice Beetz stood firmly against sanctioning such a cavalier approach to federalism and democratic deliberation. He insisted that “Parliament cannot enter the normally forbidden area of provincial jurisdiction unless it gives an unmistakable signal”. In the absence of such a signal, “[i]t is the duty of the courts to uphold the Constitution, not to seal its suspension”.

The Court has not had an opportunity to revisit the emergency power since 1976. Justice Beetz’ opinion on the required form of its exercise remains the dissenting view. But the force of his position is undeniable. It is, like all the best dissents, a law in the becoming, an imminent law set to bloom. It would be foolhardy for Parliament to attempt to invoke the emergency power by stealth ever again.

Justice Beetz’ comments on the national concern branch of POGG were powerful obiter dicta that later became the law when they were adopted by the Court in R v Crown Zellerbach Canada Ltd, [1988] 1 SCR 401 (1988) a decade later. The criteria Justice Beetz articulated – and whether those criteria need to be adjusted to give greater weight to the importance of national responses to problems of the scale and urgency of global warming – will be at the heart of the references on the validity of the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act to be heard by the Supreme Court in March 2020. The new emphasis Justice Beetz gave to provincial autonomy in 1976 will continue to shape the evolution of the POGG power and Canadian federalism jurisprudence more generally.

Justice La Forest and Unwritten Constitutional Principles

Chief Justice Lamer’s extended obiter dicta in the Provincial Judges Reference, locating a guarantee of judicial independence applicable to all courts in the preamble to the Constitution Act, 1867, were a startling and self-serving expansion of judicial power.

Justice La Forest’s dissenting opinion was a lacerating critique of the majority’s overreaching dicta. He emphasized that if judicial review is not grounded in the provisions of the text of the constitution, the courts lack a democratically legitimate basis for placing limits on the powers of the executive and legislative branches of government. “The express provisions of the Constitution are not, as the Chief Justice contends, ‘elaborations of the underlying, unwritten, and organizing principles found in the preamble”, he wrote. “On the contrary, they are the Constitution.  To assert otherwise is to subvert the democratic foundation of judicial review.”

Remarkably, Justice La Forest’s powerful critique failed to pry any of his colleagues loose from the majority opinion. The Court has adopted Chief Justice Lamer’s dicta in a series of rulings on judicial independence. Nevertheless, Justice La Forest’s dissent has had a large influence. Much of the scholarship commenting on the Court’s use of constitutional principles has echoed his concerns. Apart from the Secession Reference, [1998] 2 SCR 217], the Court over the last two decades has rebuffed many attempts to use unwritten principles to fill gaps in the constitutional text. In British Columbia v Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd, 2005 SCC 49, [2005] 2 SCR 473, for example, Justice Major wrote that “protection from legislation that some might view as unjust or unfair properly lies not in the amorphous underlying principles of our Constitution, but in its text and the ballot box”.

The opinions in the Provincial Judges Reference and the Secession Reference stand, but otherwise the Court appears to have drawn a line in the sand on the gap-filling deployment of unwritten principles. The power of Justice La Forest’s dissent has played an important role in halting any further reliance on a methodology that raised serious questions about the legitimacy of constitutional judicial review.

Justice McLachlin, Racism, and Municipal Government

At issue in Shell Canada Products Ltd v Vancouver was the validity of a resolution of the Vancouver City Council refusing to do business with Shell until the company “completely withdraws from South Africa”. The municipal boycott of Shell was motivated by “moral outrage against the racist apartheid regime in South Africa”. Justice Sopinka’s majority opinion found that the resolution was not adopted for municipal purposes and also amounted to unauthorized discrimination against Shell. For these two reasons, he concluded that the resolution was beyond the scope of the city’s statutory powers.

Justice McLachlin’s dissent rejected the majority’s parochial approach to local government. She aligned herself instead with “the weight of current commentary” that supports “a more generous, deferential approach” to the exercise of municipal powers. A healthy respect must be given, she wrote, to “the democratic responsibilities of elected municipal officials and the rights of those who elect them”. The welfare of the city’s residents included their moral welfare. Moreover, the city’s power to enter into transactions necessarily entailed a power to discriminate between companies. She thus departed from the majority’s perverse expression of greater concern about discrimination against Shell than it did about the oppression of African peoples.

While the majority’s insistence on a strict separation of municipal purposes and global concerns has yet to be overruled, the approach outlined in Justice McLachlin’s dissent has had a strong influence on the development of municipal law over the past quarter century. Citing her opinion on multiple occasions, the Court has embraced a broad and purposive approach to the interpretation of municipal powers.

The opinions in Shell participated in a long-standing Canadian tradition of managing to say nothing about racism in cases about racism. Neither opinion mentioned the inter-relationships between forms of colonialism and racism across the British Commonwealth. Nor did the Vancouver resolutions have anything to say about the connections between racism at home and abroad, and the need to address the impacts of racism and settler colonialism on Indigenous peoples in the city. Future dissents – and majority opinions – are less likely to leave these issues unspoken.

Day One: Dwight Newman

Three dissents of principle

Professor of Law, University of Saskatchewan

In considering some dissents of note, it is important to consider what factors make a dissent stand out. Amongst these are its intellectual coherence, its adherence to basic principle, and its tendency to stand up to a majority opinion with some surface allures. In some cases, such dissents of principle end up shaping the law in future, and that is the case in varying ways with all three of the dissents I will discuss here: the dissent of Beetz J. in the Anti-Inflation Act Reference, [1976] 2 SCR 373, the dissent of La Forest J. in the Reference re Remuneration of Judges of the Provincial Court (P.E.I.), [1997] 3 SCR 3, and the dissent of LeBel J. in Alberta v. Hutterian Brethren of Wilson Colony, 2009 SCC 37, [2009] 2 SCR 567.

Beetz J. in the Anti-Inflation Act Reference

Justice Beetz, though not always attracting as much attention today, was an intellectual giant of his era. His dissenting opinion in the 1976 Anti-Inflation Act Reference, in which he stood up for fundamental principles of federalism, is a landmark judgment. In the case, Beetz J. wrote against the majority judgments upholding relatively popular legislation designed to combat severe inflation, including the lead judgment of Laskin C.J.C. supported by the future chief justice Dickson J.

In doing so, Beetz J. had to articulate tests for the so-called “peace, order, and good government” (POGG) power. While the majority mistakenly stated the POGG test too broadly and in ways that would harm Canadian federalism had they come to be applied in other cases, the tests articulated by Beetz J. could inform future jurisprudence, notably shaping the approaches of both the majority and the dissent in the 1988 decision in R. v. Crown Zellerbach Ltd., [1988] 1 S.C.R. 401. 

On the use of the national concern branch of POGG, Beetz J. actually obtained a majority even in the Anti-Inflation Act Reference itself, as Ritchie J.’s opinion signed on with Beetz J. on this issue. The judgment of Laskin C.J.C. had a peculiar ambiguity to it, not drawing clear distinctions between “national dimensions” and a “national emergency”, and Beetz J.’s dissent thus offered an appealing intellectual rigour by comparison to an approach that would have failed to offer meaningful constraints on federal power. Indeed, Beetz J. presciently warned against the dangers of the federal government inventing new powers by developing creative names for matters it sought to claim under the POGG power.

On the emergency branch, Beetz J. was ready to insist upon the need for transparency in any invocation of emergency powers, along with the other elements needed for the use of the power, including genuine temporariness.  Writing of the mixed body of evidence put forth in support of the federal anti-inflation legislation allegedly being focused on an emergency, Beetz J. showed his readiness to describe matters frankly: “I remain unimpressed” (p. 466). His dissent in the case continues to stand as a tour de force in resisting federal overreach.

La Forest J. in the Provincial Court Judges Reference

The dissent of La Forest J. in the Reference re Remuneration of Judges of the Provincial Court (P.E.I.) (Provincial Court Judges Reference), saw La Forest J. standing alone against a Court that claimed to find unwritten constitutional principles governing judicial salaries. The forthrightness of the judgment is stark, as La Forest J. wrote that “the approach adopted by the Chief Justice, in my view, misapprehends the nature of the Constitution Act, 1867” (para. 320) and he suggested that the approach adopted caused the very legitimacy of the Court to be “imperiled” (para. 316). Indeed, he saw the case as being about “the nature of judicial power” (para. 300) in so far as the rest of the Court dreamt up arguments not proffered by the parties to find unwritten principles in the preamble of the Constitution Act, 1867.

In doing so, the majority set the stage for the kind of reasoning they would end up using in the Reference re Secession of Quebec, [1998] 2 SCR 217 shortly thereafter. But it was La Forest J.’s resistance to judicially created principles that would later win out, as the Court had to take  steps in British Columbia v. Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., 2005 SCC 49, [2005] 2 SCR 473 to fend off a surge in litigation grounded in alleged unwritten principles. The majority managed to use unwritten principles on judicial salaries and on secession but came to realize that such an approach was unmanageable for the judiciary as an institution. In Imperial Tobacco, it also indicated its arguably newfound respect for “the delimitation of […] rights chosen by our constitutional framers” (para. 65). While unwritten constitutional principles were convenient in a particular moment, the principled position is to seek to focus on the written text, and that was what La Forest J. defended. 

There has been over the years much talk that La Forest J.’s  resignation from the Court—essentially simultaneous with the release of the judgment in being announced weeks before the release and taking effect weeks after—was a mark of his profound disagreement with the decision, its methodology, and its implications for the upcoming cases. His dissent lives on as a defence of the rule of law.

LeBel J. in Alberta v. Hutterian Brethren of Wilson Colony

There are many important Charter dissents, and the dissent of LeBel J. in Alberta v. Hutterian Brethren of Wilson Colony might not be a common choice.  In some ways, the dissent of Abella J. in the same case has attracted more attention and defends some of the same positions as those within the dissent of LeBel J. But it is LeBel J.’s dissent that has a certain starkness and that marks more profoundly a certain commonsensical resistance to the majority’s convenience-oriented rejection of a religious freedom claim.

The facts concerned the religious freedom claim of a small group of 250 Hutterite farmers from some particular colonies in rural Alberta whose understanding of Scriptural principles against graven images took a particularly strict form: they took the view that they could not have their photographs on their driver licences. The province of Alberta had implemented a universal photo requirement to create a universal facial recognition database and removed an exemption previously granted to these 250 Hutterite farmers that would exclude them from the database, along with the 700,000 Albertans who did not have driver licences at all.   

While the majority opinion of McLachlin C.J.C. (erroneously) accepted the creation of the database itself as the government objective for purposes of analyzing any infringement and McLachlin C.J.C went so far as to suggest that the farmers in question could simply arrange alternative transportation, LeBel J. eviscerated the majority logic in a few lines. Writing against the judgment of McLachlin C.J.C. —who grew up in rural Alberta—it fell to LeBel J. to point out the importance of a driver’s licence in rural Alberta and to suggest that an appropriate constitutional balance was not obtained “by belittling the impact of the measures on the beliefs and religious practices of the Hutterites and by asking them to rely on taxi drivers and truck rental services to operate their farms and to preserve their way of life” (para. 201). 

The defence of collective aspects of religious freedom resonating through various parts of LeBel J.’s dissent (and the subject of a beautiful passage about communities of faith at para. 182), also found in Abella J.’s dissent, won out in Loyola High School v. Quebec (Attorney General), 2015 SCC 12, [2015] 1 SCR 613.  There, McLachlin C.J.C. and Moldaver J., wth Rothstein J. also signing on, decided to state that LeBel J. had not actually been in dissent on the significance of religious communities and the collective dimensions of religious freedom (para. 93). Sadly, such reassurances may have come too late, as many understood the majority opinion in Hutterite Brethren as implicitly about worries about future cases involving Muslims, and the majority’s tolerance of government restrictions probably set a tone for the years to come. But, in principle, LeBel J.’s dissent came to be the law on these aspects.

Another, fascinating dimension of LeBel J.’s dissent also deserves more attention than it has received thus far. In his dissent, he also fosters new thought on the Oakes test for rights limitations, recognizing explicitly some problems in how it had come to be applied over the years. This thought was also prescient, and further rethinking of the Oakes test has emerged as an arena for ongoing discussion. Like other great dissents of principle, LeBel J.’s dissent in Hutterian Brethren sparkles with intellectual energy and stands on fundamental points of principle in ways that make it endure not as a mere minority report but as a light for the future.

Lack of National Concern

Here’s a question that bothers me. In the arguments about its proposed Senate reform, the federal government has asserted that it could set “consultative” elections of Senate “nominees” pursuant to the general “peace, order and good government” (a.k.a. POGG) power of s. 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867. The counter-argument is that such elections are a modification of the Constitution of Canada “in relation to … the method of selecting Senators” and, as such, can only be implemented under the amending formula of s. 42 of the Constitution Act, 1982. The debate on this point has focused entirely on the interpretation of s. 42. But what about s. 91? The POGG power, after all, is a narrow one (as I have explained here). Would consultative elections fall within its scope?

As the Supreme Court explained in R. v. Crown Zellerbach Canada Ltd., [1988] 1 S.C.R. 401, the POGG power has two main branches. One is a broad but temporary power of dealing with emergencies. It obviously has no relevance here. The other branch, often referred to as “national concern,” “applies,” as Justice Le Dain found after a careful review of the relevant precedents, “to both new matters which did not exist at Confederation and to matters which, although originally matters of a local or private nature in a province, have since, in the absence of national emergency, become matters of national concern.”

It seems to me that “consultative elections” to the Senate do not fit either of these criteria. They are obviously not something which, like aviation or telecommunications, did not exist at confederation ― or rather, could not even be thought of. Elections of Senators admittedly did not exist ― but only because the Fathers of Confederation, after much debate and consideration, opted for an appointed rather than an elected Senate. Nor are they “originally matters of a local or private nature” that came until provincial jurisdiction until concerted national action became necessary.

In its factum, the federal government cites a single case in support of its claim that consultative elections fall within the scope of the POGG power: Jones v. A.G. of New Brunswick, [1975] 2 S.C.R. 1982. But I don’t think that it is much on point. Jones was a challenge (among other things) to the constitutionality of the provisions of the Official Languages Act which entitled people to give evidence in the official language of their choice in judicial and quasi-judicial proceedings before courts and tribunals established by Parliament, and in criminal proceedings in provincial courts. Although the Supreme Court referred to the “peace, order and good government” language, it did not actually rely on the POGG power to uphold these provisions, finding instead that they were justified by Parliament’s powers to establish courts “for the better administration of the laws of Canada” (s. 101 of the Constitution Act, 1867) and over criminal law (s. 91(27)). It is instructive, I think, that Justice Le Dain’s comprehensive review of the POGG jurisprudence in Crown Zellerbach does not even mention Jones.

Still, one constant theme in the POGG case law is that it a power that allows the federal government to act when provinces cannot. Should it apply to consultative elections on that basis alone, since provinces ― although perhaps they could organize such elections on their own (a point on which I also have doubts, which I will explain in a separate post) ― could not bind the Prime Minister to “consider” recommending the appointment of their winners? After all, between them, Parliament and the provincial legislatures must be able, to quote A.V. Dicey’s well-known statement of the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, “to make and unmake any law whatever,” right? Well, not exactly. The principle of parliamentary sovereignty must be modified in Canada, not only because of a distribution of legislative powers between two levels of legislatures, but also because some rules, those that belong to the constitution of Canada as a whole, are outside the reach of either of these legislative powers acting alone, though it can of course be modified by constitutional amendment with the requisite level of federal and provincial support. The whole question here is whether current (implicit) rule pursuant to which there are no consultative elections of Senate nominees is among these rules. The fact that its modification does not fit within the recognized categories of the POGG power is, arguably, an indication that it is.

The biggest problem I see with this argument, and it is a very serious one, is just how far it goes. Arguably, if Parliament cannot set up consultative elections under its POGG power, nor can it set up a consultative referendum process for situations that are not within the scope of its ordinary legislative powers. So, for example, while Parliament’s power over “Militia, Military and Naval Service, and Defence,” under s. 91(7) of the Constitution Act, 1867), authorized it hold the two referenda on conscription, it had no authorization to hold a referendum on constitutional amendment, such as the one on the Charlottetown Accord in 1992. For what is the source of Parliament’s power to hold such a referendum? It cannot be anything other than POGG, yet unless we can show that referenda on constitutional subjects are a new “matter” uncontemplated in 1867, or an emergency, that does not work either. Neither of these arguments seems obvious… though really I don’t know enough to tell. In any case, to the best of my knowledge ― though again, it may be very deficient ― no one has questioned Parliament’s power to enact the Referendum Act, S.C. 1992 c. 30, which authorizes the federal government “to obtain by means of a referendum the opinion of electors on any question relating to the Constitution of Canada.” Of course, the fact that the constitutionality of a statute has not been questioned in the past is not proof  that the statute is indeed constitutional. But it does suggest that any claims to the contrary are likely ― and perhaps deserve ― to be met with serious skepticism.

Still, however unlikely its acceptance, I wonder if my reasoning above is correct. It is entirely possible that I have missed something. Perhaps I am simply reading Crown Zellerbach too literally, and the “unforeseen in 1867″/”expected-to-be-local-but-become-national” dichotomy does not exhaust the POGG power. I would like to hear your views. As it is, I find the lack of concern with the question I try to raise here a bit surprising.

The Pursuit of Difference

I promised my post earlier today, to say more about the belief that the alleged national slogans of Canada and the United States – respectively “peace, order, and good government,” and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” – tell us something about the two countries generally and their constitutions specifically. Here goes.

Those who hold this belief conveniently forget that the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are found not in the U.S. Constitution, but in the Declaration of Independence, which has no legal effect, and does  not define the goals of American government. The Declaration was adopted to justify a revolution, and was animated by  a very different spirit than the Constitution, which was intended to establish an effective government. In his Lectures on the French Revolution (which I heartily recommend, both for the depth of the ideas and for the brilliance of the language), Lord Acton described the Declaration as the Americans’ “cutting,” and the Constitution as their “sewing.”

The Constitution Act, 1867 is the Canadian “sewing,” and it is, accordingly, not appropriate to compare it to the Declaration of Independence. The appropriate comparison is rather with the U.S. Constitution. The preamble of the latter describes its aims as “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” Well, common defence, domestic tranquility, and general welfare sound an awful lot like peace, order, and good government.

As is usually the case, we are just much less different from the United States than our romantic nationalists like to think. The pursuit of difference is an unprofitable, albeit occasionally entertaining, pastime. We would do well, methinks, not to try to be different from someone else, but to be more ourselves.

It’s Not a POGGrom!

Canada’s “newspaper of record” has published an ignorant rant by Neil Reynolds, savaging alleged abuses, rhetorical, legislative, and jurisprudential, of  the “Peace, Order, and Good government” (a.k.a. POGG) clause of s. 91 of the Constitution Act, 1867, which sets out the powers of the federal Parliament. While the words “peace, order, and good good government” are indeed sometimes used to draw, or rather to provide rhetorical cover for, expansive and unwarranted conclusions about Canada and its constitution, most of Mr. Reynolds’ claims about the clause’s use by Parliament and courts are flat out wrong.

Mr. Reynolds’ first target is a “Canadian myth[] [that] holds that our constitutional mandate for peace, order and good government has made Canada a kinder, gentler place than the United States – debauched by its licentious pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  I’ve heard that line before, and I agree that it is silly. Mr. Reynolds is right that “POGG … was imperial boilerplate,” a perfunctory introduction to a clause vesting the legislative power in Parliament. It certainly does not give courts the right he strike down laws on the basis that they are not conducive to peace, order, and good government. (We might not have much of a statute book if it did.) It does not tell us much of anything about the sort of country we are. (I will have more to say about this in another post shortly.) [UPDATE: that post is here.]

Beyond that, however, Mr. Reynolds’ argument does not disclose much of an understanding of Canadian constitutional law. He claims that “POGG has been used from the very beginning to override” the division of powers between Parliament and provincial legislatures. Apart from bald assertions, his evidence for this claim consists of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the constitutionality of the Anti-Inflation Act, Pierre Trudeau’s application of the War Measures Act during the October Crisis, Parliament’s creation of Employment Insurance, and its use of the spending power to  “fund everything (or almost everything) and disperse it directly and indirectly, hither and yon, as they deem fit.” This is almost entirely wrong. Continue reading “It’s Not a POGGrom!”