purpose – Double Aspect

Against Pure Pragmatism in Statutory Interpretation II: Evaluating Rizzo

Part II in a 3 part Double Aspect series

Please read Part I of this series before reading this post.

In the first post of this series, I set out to explain the concept of pragmatism in statutory interpretation, as explained by Ruth Sullivan. My contention was that Rizzo, arguably Canada’s seminal statutory interpretation judgment, is a pragmatic judgment. Relatedly, I argued. that a purely pragmatic approach to statutory interpretation, while providing interpreters with maximum flexibility, also fails in two potential ways: (1) it permits judges to assign weights to interpretive tools that may run counter to the point of statutory intepretation: to discern what this particular text means; and (2) it could lead to methodological unpredicability–a problem that I will outline in Part III of this series.

In this post, I will address why Rizzo is a fundamentally pragmatic judgment. It is pragmatic because it leaves open the possibility, particularly in the use of purpose, for text to be supplanted if other interpretive tools point in another direction. In other words, it does not make a claim that some interpretive tools are more appropriate than others in the abstract. In the pragmatic approach, it is up to the judge to assign the weights; rather than the methodological doctrine guiding this selection, the judges themselves have unbridled discretion to mould statutory interpretation methods to the case in front of them, based on factual contexts, contemporary values, or otherwise. As I will note in Part III, this sounds good in theory—but in practice is less than desirable.

Rizzo was a garden-variety statutory interpretation case, and I need not go deep into the facts to show what is at stake. Basically, the key question was whether employees of a now-bankrupt company could claim termination and severance payments after bankruptcy [1]. The key problem was whether the relevant legislation permitted the benefits to accrue to the employees, even though their employment was terminated by bankruptcy rather than by normal means. The relevant provisions of the Bankruptcy Act and the Employment Standards Act, on a plain reading, seemed to prevent the employees from claiming these benefits if their employment was terminated by way of bankruptcy [23].

The Supreme Court chastised the Court of Appeal for falling into this plain meaning trap. To the Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal “…did not pay attention to the scheme of the ESA, its object or the intention of the legislature; nor was the context of the words in issue appropriately recognized” [23]. The Supreme Court endorsed this now-famous passage as the proper method of interpretation in Canada:

21 Although much has been written about the interpretation of legislation (see, e.g., Ruth Sullivan, Statutory Interpretation (1997); Ruth Sullivan, Driedger on the Construction of Statutes (3rd ed. 1994) (hereinafter “Construction of Statutes”); Pierre-André Côté, The Interpretation of Legislation in Canada (2nd ed. 1991)), Elmer Driedger in Construction of Statutes (2nd ed. 1983) best encapsulates the approach upon which I prefer to rely. He recognizes that statutory interpretation cannot be founded on the wording of the legislation alone. At p. 87 he states:

Today there is only one principle or approach, namely, the words of an Act are to be read in their entire context and in their grammatical and ordinary sense harmoniously with the scheme of the Act, the object of the Act, and the intention of Parliament.

Using this approach, the Court reasoned that the provisions in questions needed to be interpreted with their objects in mind—specifically, the relevant provisions were designed to “protect employees” [25]. For example, section 40 of the Employment Standards Act, one of the provisions in question, “requires employers to give their employees reasonable notice of termination based upon length of service” [25]. Such a notice period (with termination pay where the employer does not adhere to the notice period), is designed to “provide employees with an opportunity to take preparatory measures and seek alternative employment” [25]. Ditto for the provisions governing severance pay [26].

The Court also relied on a number of other interpretive factors to reach the conclusion that the severance and termination pay provisions governed even in cases of bankruptcy. Two are important here. First, the Court relied on the absurdity canon: where possible, interpretations of statutes that lead to “absurd results” should be avoided. Particularly, the Court, endorsing Sullivan, notes that “…a label of absurdity can be attached to interpretations which defeat the purpose of a statute or render some aspect of it pointless or futile…” [27]. In this case, the fact that an employee could be terminated a day before the bankruptcy—and receive benefits—and another employee could be terminated after bankruptcy—and not receive benefits—was an absurdity that ran counter to the purpose of the statute to provide a cushion for terminated employees [30]. The Court also focused on legislative history, which it acknowledged can play a “limited role in the interpretation of legislation” [35].

All of this to say, Rizzo is, to my mind, a pragmatic judgment for statutory interpretation. This is because, when it endorses the classic Driedger formula at paragraph 21, it does not venture further to show which of the interpretive tools it relies on are to be given the most weight in interpretation; and accordingly, Rizzo could lead to courts assigning weights to interpretive tools that could distort the process of interpretation. For example, the Rizzo Court does not say—as later Supreme Court cases do—that purpose cannot supplant text in interpretation (Placer Dome, at para 23). In other words, when courts source purpose, text is given more weight in interpretation because it is the anchor for purpose (see, for example, the Court’s analysis in Telus v Wellman, at paras 79, 82-83). This can be seen as the Court saying that text is assigned the most weight in interpretation, and that purpose is parasitic on text. When sourced in this way, then, there is no reason to assume that there will ever be a conflict between purpose and text, because purpose is merely one way to understand text. But Rizzo does not say this, instead suggesting that in some cases, purpose can supplant text.

This is the product of pragmatism. Taken on its own, Rizzo’s endorsement of Driedger permits “…each judge [to take advantage] of the full range of interpretive resources available….and deploys those resources appropriately given the particularities of the case” (see here). The possibility for highly abstract purposes to, in appropriate cases, subvert text is a function of the failure of Rizzo to assign clear weights to the interpretive tools in a way that reflects Canada’s fundamental constitutional principles, including the task of courts to discover what the text of statutes mean. I should note, though, that this is not a bug of pragmatism to its adherents; rather, it is a feature. The pragmatists conclude that text should have no special role in interpretation if other factors push against giving effect to text. As I will point out in my next post, this liberates judges to an unacceptable extent when measured in relation to the basic task of interpretation.

Against Pure Pragmatism in Statutory Interpretation I

The first post in a three-part Double Aspect series.

Rizzo & Rizzo, arguably Canada’s leading case on statutory interpretation, has now been cited at least 4581 times according to CanLII. Specifically, the following passage has been cited by courts at least 2000 times. This passage, to many, forms the core of Canada’s statutory interpretation method:

21 Although much has been written about the interpretation of legislation (see, e.g., Ruth Sullivan, Statutory Interpretation (1997); Ruth Sullivan, Driedger on the Construction of Statutes (3rd ed. 1994) (hereinafter “Construction of Statutes”); Pierre-André Côté, The Interpretation of Legislation in Canada (2nd ed. 1991)), Elmer Driedger in Construction of Statutes (2nd ed. 1983) best encapsulates the approach upon which I prefer to rely. He recognizes that statutory interpretation cannot be founded on the wording of the legislation alone. At p. 87 he states:

This paragraph has reached the status of scripture for Canadian academics. To many, it stands as a shining example of how Canadian law has rejected “plain meaning,” or “textualist” approaches to law (though these are not the same thing at all, scholars as eminent as Ruth Sullivan have confused them). Most notably, as Sullivan argues, the practice of the Supreme Court of Canada under the auspices of the modern approach could be considered pragmatist. In many ways, pragmatism is considered by many in related fields to be an implicitly desirable good. Pragmatism in statutory interpretation, to its adherents, pulls the curtain back on judicial reasoning in statutory cases, asking courts to candidly weigh the factors they think are most important to reaching the proper result.

Pragmatism can be seen as a sliding scale—where one factor (such as text) is most persuasive, other factors (such as extrinsic evidence) will need to be stronger to overcome the text. In other cases, the opposite may be true. Notably, as championed by people like Richard Posner, pragmatism is focused on achieving sensible results. Therefore, the methodological approach used to achieve those results matters less than the results themselves.

While I am not sure proponents of pragmatism would classify Rizzo, particularly its leading paragraph, as a pragmatic judgment, in my view, Rizzo alone illustrates the key problem with pragmatism as an organizing and standalone theory of statutory interpretation. The Rizzo formula simply presents a laundry list of factors which should guide judicial decision-making, but fails to prescribe weights ex ante to those factors. It seems to assume that, in each case, the weights to the various factors are either (1) equal or (2) assigned by the judge in a given case. This is the key virtue of pragmatism. But it is also its vice, because “…without an advance commitment to basic interpretive principles, who can anticipate how a judiciary of Posnerian pragmatists would articulate and apply that law?” (see here, at 820). In other words, in a pragmatic approach “[e]verything is up for grabs” (820). Specifically, pure pragmatism has a number of potential issues:

It ignores that, in our legal system, the text of the statute (read in light of its context and purpose, sourced in text) is what governs, and for that reason, should be given the most weight in all interpretation, even if the text is open-textured. Courts must do the best they can to extract meaning from the text, read in light of its context. Call this formalism, call it textualism, call it whatever. The Supreme Court has said that the task of interpretation cannot be undertaken in order to impeach the meaning of text with extra-textual considerations (Telus v Wellman, at para 79).
Aside from the in-principle objection, there is a practical problem. While pragmatists claim that they are bringing the judicial reasoning process into the open, forcing judges to justify the weights they assign to various interpretive factors, in truth a fully-discretionary approach permits judges to reach any result they might wish, especially if they take into account broad “values-based” reasoning, as Sullivan advocates, or source purpose at some high level of abstraction, untethered to text.
Finally, the invitation to consider all factors in statutory interpretation, invited by Rizzo and the pragmatists, seems to assume that each interpretive factor will have something to say in a range of cases. But there are inherent problems with each interpretive factor, including text. The question for statutory interpretation methodology is, in the run of cases, which factors are more persuasive and controlling? By failing to provide an ex ante prediction about this question, pragmatists run close to abridging the idea that courts are supposed to develop norms—guiding principles—for statutory interpretation (see 2747-3174 Quebec Inc, at 995-996).

In order to develop these arguments, and address powerful (and some not-so-powerful) counter-arguments, I will be launching a series on Double Aspect on statutory interpretation, designed around the idea of pragmatism. The second post in the series will summarize Rizzo and why it is indicative of a pragmatist approach. The third post in the series will point out, using Rizzo itself, the flaws of pragmatism. It will also laud the Supreme Court and lower courts for, in recent years, blunting the edge of the pragmatist approach. Overall, this series will be designed to show that while text, context, and purpose are relevant interpretive factors, the task of interpretation is one that must be guided by ex ante guiding principles, not an “anything goes” approach. To this end, a recent attempt by Justice David Stratas and David Williams to assign ex ante weights to statutory interpretive factors is laudable and desirable. It should be followed.

A note of caution: the point of this series is not to advocate for a purely text-based approach, or a “plain-meaning approach.” Many have fallen into the trap of simply labelling arguments that highlight the primacy of text as being “textualism” or “plain-meaning.” Many resist the idea of text as a governing factor in interpretation because they believe it is equal to a literal reading, or because it does not take context into account. Virtually no one advocates for this line of thinking anymore. It is a strawman.

Additionally, the point of this series is not to impugn pragmatism wholesale. Instead, the point of this series is to point out that while pragmatism and flexibility have their place in interpretation, those things cannot come at the expense of an interpretive methodology that guides judges according to the core tenets of our legal system, including the separation of powers, as understood by the Supreme Court (see again Telus v Wellman, at para 79).

Stay tuned.

Linguistic Nihilism

One common line of attack against textualism—the idea that “the words of a governing text are of paramount concern, and what they convey, in their context, is what the text means (Scalia & Garner, at 56)—is that language is never clear, or put differently, hopelessly vague or ambiguous. Put this way, the task of interpretation based on text is a fool’s game. Inevitably, so the argument goes, courts will need to resort to extraneous purposes, “values,” social science evidence, pre or post-enactment legislative history, or consequential analysis to impose meaning on text that cannot be interpreted.

I cannot agree with this argument. For one, the extraneous sources marshalled by anti-textualists bristle with probative problems, and so are not reliable indicators of legislative meaning themselves. More importantly, an “anything goes” approach to interpretation offers no guidance to judges who must, in tough cases, actually interpret the law in predictable way. In this post, I will explore these arguments. My point is that a sort of linguistic nihilism that characterizes anti-textualist arguments is not conclusive, but merely invites further debate about the relative role of text and other terms.

Putting aside frivolous arguments one often hears about textualism (ie: “it supports a conservative agenda” or “it is the plain meaning approach”), one clear criticism of textualism is that interpretation is not self-executing. Jorge Gracia, for example, writes:

…texts are always given in a certain language that obeys rules and whose signs denote and connote more or less established meanings. In addition, the audience cannot help but bring to the text its own cultural, psychological, and conceptual context. Indeed, the understanding of the meaning of a text can be carried out only by bringing something to the text that is not already there…
Gracia, A Theory of Textuality: The Logic and Epistemology, at 28

Sullivan calls this situation the “pervasive indeterminacy of language” (see here, at 206). Put this way, as Sullivan notes, it is impossible to interpret text in its linguistic context:

It is not possible for judges who interpret a provision of the Criminal Code or the Income Tax Act to wipe out the beliefs, values and expectations that they bring to their reading. They cannot erase their knowledge of law or the subject of legislation. They cannot case aside legal culture, with its respect for common law and evolving constitutional values…Like any other readers, if they want to make sense of a text, judges must rely on the context that they themselves bring to the text (see 208).

This form of linguistic nihilism is highly attractive. So goes the argument, if texts cannot be interpreted on their own, judges should and must bring their own personal biases and values to the text, as a desirable or inevitable result of the unclear text. And if that’s the case, we should adopt another type of interpretive record—perhaps one that centres what a judge in a particular case thinks the equities ought to be.

This argument aside, I find it hard to accept. First, the tools that are inevitably supposed to resolve these ambiguities or vagueness themselves are ambiguous and vague; so it is hard to hold them up as paragons of clarity against hopelessly clear text.

Let’s consider, first, the tools often advanced by non-textualists that are supposed to bring clarity to the interpretive exercise. Purpose is one such tool. In Canadian statutory interpretation, purpose and context must be sourced in every case, even when the text is admittedly clear on first blush (ATCO, at para 48). Put together, text, context, and purpose must be read together harmoniously (Canada Trustco, at para 47). But sometimes, purpose is offered by anti-textualists as an “out” from ambiguity or vagueness in the text itself. The problem is that sourcing purpose is not self-executing either. Purpose can be stated at various levels of abstraction (see here, and in general, Hillier). In other words, purpose can be the most abstract purpose of the statute possible (say, to achieve justice, as Max Radin once said); or it could be the minute details of particular provisions. There can be many purposes in a statute, stated in opposite terms (see Rafilovich for an example of this). Choosing purposes in these cases can be just as difficult as figuring out what words mean. This is especially so because the Supreme Court has never really provided guidance on the interaction between text and purpose, instead simply stating that these things must be read “harmoniously.” What this means in distinct cases is unclear. This is why it is best to source purpose with reference to text itself (see here).

Legislative history also presents well-known problems. One might advance the case that a Minister, when introducing a bill, speaks to the bill and gives his view of the bill’s purpose. Others may say differently. In some cases, legislative history can be probative. But in many cases, legislative history is not useful at all. For one, and this is true in both Canada and the US, we are bound by laws; not by the intentions of draftspeople. What a Minister thinks is enacted in text does not necessarily equate to what is actually enacted (see my post here on the US case of Bostock). There may be many reasons why bills were drafted the way they were in particular cases, but it is not probative to think legislative history (which can be manipulated) should be some cure-all for textual ambiguity or vagueness.

Finally, one might say that it is inevitable and desirable for judges to bring their own personal values and experiences to judging and interpreting statutes. This is a common refrain these days. To some extent, I agree with those who say that such value-based judging is inevitable. Judges are human beings, and are not robots. We cannot expect them to put aside all implicit value judgments in all cases. But one of the purposes of law, and of the rules of interpretation, is to ensure that decisions are reasoned according to a uniform set of rules applicable across the mass of cases. We have to limit idiosyncratic reasoning to the extent we can/ If we give up on defining with clarity such rules—in order to liberate judges and their own personal views—we no longer have a system of interpretation defined by law. Rather, we have a system of consequences, where judges reach the results they like based on the cases in front of them. This might sound like a nice idea to some, but in the long run, it is an unpredictable way to solve legal disputes.

If all of the tools of interpretation, including text, are imperfect, what is an interpreter to do? One classic answer to this problem is what I call the “anything goes” approach. Sullivan seems to say that this is what the Supreme Court actually does in its statutory interpretation cases (see here, at 183-184). While I question this orthodox view in light of certain cases, I take Sullivan’s description to be indicative of a normative argument. If the Supreme Court cannot settle on one theory of interpretation, perhaps it is best to settle on multiple theories. Maybe, in some cases, legislative history is extremely probative, and it takes precedence over text. Maybe, in some cases, purpose carries more weight than text. This is a sort of pragmatic approach that allows judges to use the tools of interpretation in response to the facts of particular cases.

This is attractive because it does not put blinders on the interpreter. It also introduces “nuance” and “context” to the interpretation exercise. All of this sounds good. But in reality, I am not sure that the “anything goes” approach, where judges assign weight on various tools in various cases, is all that helpful. I will put aside the normative objections—for example, the idea that text is adopted by the legislature or its delegates and legislative history is not—and instead focus on the pragmatic problems. Good judicial decisions depend on good judicial reasoning. Good judicial reasoning is more likely to occur if it depends less on a particular judge’s writing prowess and more on sourcing that reasoning from precedential and well-practiced rules. But there is no external, universal rule to guide the particular weights that judges should assign to various tools of interpretation, and even further, what factors will guide the assignment of weights. At the same time, some people might argue that rules that are too stringent will stymie the human aspect of judging.

In my view, an answer to this was provided by Justice Stratas in a recent paper co-authored with his clerk, David Williams. The piece offers an interesting and well-reasoned way of ordering tools of interpretation. For Stratas & Williams, there are certain “green light” “yellow light” and “red light” tools in statutory interpretation. Green light tools include text and context, as well as purpose when it is sourced in text. Yellow light tools are ones that must be used with caution—for example, legislative history and social science evidence. Red light tools are ones that should never be used—for example, personal policy preferences.

I think this is a sound way of viewing the statutory interpretation problem. The text is naturally the starting point, since text is what is adopted by the legislature or its delegates, and is often the best evidence of what the legislature meant. Context is necessary as a pragmatic tool to understand text. Purpose can be probative as well, if sourced in text.

Sometimes, as I mentioned above, legislative history can be helpful. But it must be used with caution. The same goes with social science evidence, which might be helpful if it illustrates the consequences of different interpretations, and roots those consequences back to internal statutory tools like text or purpose. But again, social science evidence cannot be used to contradict clear text.

Finally, I cannot imagine a world in which a judge’s personal views on what legislation should mean should be at all probative. Hence, it is a red light tool.

In this framework, judges are not asked to, on a case-by-case basis, assign weights to the tools that the judge thinks is most helpful. Instead, the tools are ranked according to their probative value. This setup has the benefit of rigidity, in that it does assign objective weight to the factors before interpretation begins. At the same time, it keeps the door open to using various tools that could deal with textual ambiguity or vagueness.

The point is that textualism cannot be said to be implausible simply because it takes some work to squeeze meaning out of text. The alternatives are not any better. If we can arrange text at the hierarchy of a list of other tools, that may be a solid way forward.

On Canadian Statutory Interpretation and Recent Trends

I have had the pleasure of reading (for the first time front-to-back) the legal interpretation classic, Reading Law by Justice Scalia and Bryan Garner. For Canadian courts struggling with how to source and use purpose when interpreting statutes, Reading Law provides valuable assistance. It does so by outlining two schools of thought on how to source purpose, schools of thought that are prevalent in Canadian debates and recent decisions over statutory interpretation. On the one hand is purposivism; on the other hand is textualism. While these schools do not actually differ about whether purpose should form part of the interpretive exercise, they do differ about how to actually determine what purpose governs. Canada’s recent statutory interpretation cases point to the textualist direction.

The first school of thought, broadly known as purposivism, is apparently Canada’s leading approach to statutory interpretation. Purposivism “acknowledges that the meaning of language is imprecise and measures words against contextual, schematic, and purposive considerations” (see Hutchison, here, at 8). Aharon Barak claims that:

[a]ccording to purposive interpretation, the purpose of a text is a normative concept. It is a legal construction that helps the interpreter understand a legal text. The author of the text created the text. The purpose of the text is not part of the text itself. The judge formulates the purpose based on information about the intention of the text’s author (subjective purpose) and the “intention” of the legal system (objective purpose) (Barak, Purposive Interpretation, at 110).

The motivation behind purposivism is a sort of legal realism that queries whether text can ever truly be clear enough to be a dominant force in legal interpretation (see, for a characteristic example of this line of thinking, the opinion of Breyer J in FCC v NextWave Personal Communications Inc, 537 U.S. 293, 311). Purpose is thus a way to deal with latent ambiguities that may naturally arise in text. And importantly, purpose is focused on the “ends” a statute is designed to achieve, perhaps at a high level of abstraction or generality. On a radical purposive account, the goal of interpretation is to effectuate whatever the court determines the purpose(s) to be; text is merely a means to the end of purpose. Put differently, text is derived from purpose under the purposive account.

On the other hand is “textualism.” Textualism receives a bad rap in Canada, but that is probably more due to caricature than a real appraisal of the merits and demerits of the textualist method. Here Scalia & Garner have much to say. While the central feature of textualism is the idea that “if the text…is clear, interpreters should not impeach the text using extrinsic evidence of statutory purpose…” (Manning & Stephenson, Legislation and Regulation, at 94), textualism does not ask a court to “put on blinders that shield the legislative purpose from view” (Scalia & Garner, at 20; see also William Popkin, “An ‘Internal’ Critique of Justice Scalia’s Theory of Statutory Interpretation,” 76 Minn L Rev 1133, 1142 (1992)). Instead, purpose is “deduced from a close reading of the text” (Scalia & Garner, 20). Put differently, purpose is derived from text on the textualist account.

Why are textualists concerned about purposes achieved without reference to the text? First, textualists are concerned about the generality problem (see Max Radin, “Statutory Interpretation,” 43 Harv L Rev 863, 876 (1930)). A court motivated by its own results-oriented reasoning could choose a purpose that is barely represented in text, or is otherwise quite abstract in relation to text. Indeed, at the highest level of generality, every statute could be said to pursue “justice and security” (see Radin). But choosing that purpose could distort the means used by the statute chosen to achieve its ends by “enabling…crabbed interpretations to limiting provisions and unrealistically expansive interpretations to narrow provisions” (Scalia & Garner, at 20). This particular problem also has resonance in administrative interpretations of law, where an expansive purposive interpretation of enabling provisions could actually result in more deference to decision-makers than what the text itself allows.

Second, textualists are concerned with the realities of the legislative process and the fact that legislatures are imperfect. The takeaway from the Legal Process school, which influences purposivism, is that legislatures pursue reasonable purposes reasonably. But textualists understand that legislation, especially in the US, is a result of legislative compromise. While purposes may be clear, text pursues purposes in different ways. In this way, textualists are more concerned with the implementational rather than the ulterior purposes of legislation. Legislation can implement purposes in text in various ways. A generalized example here is instructive:

For example, a statute providing a specific protection and a discrete remedy for purchasers of goods can be said to have as its purpose “protecting the consumer.” That would not justify expansive consumer-friendly interpretations of provisions that are narrowly drawn (Scalia & Garner, at 57).

What does this dispute between textualists and purposivists have to do with Canada? From a descriptive perspective, it describes perfectly what is happening in Canadian courts right now with regards to purpose. Normatively, Scalia & Garner’s text explains why a textualist-purposive approach is well-justified.

On the descriptive account, the Supreme Court in the past has fallen victim to the “level of generality” problem. West Fraser is a classic example. There, the dispute was whether a British Columbia statute permitted fines to be levied for workplace safety violations against owners of land on which accidents occurred. The relevant provision under which West Fraser was fined was, by its text, only applicable to “employers.” But Chief Justice McLachlin, for the majority, held that the ultimate purpose of the statute was to “promote workplace safety in the broadest sense” (see West Fraser, at para 17). This allowed her to conclude that the particular text of the section under interpretation should be interpreted to cover off West Fraser’s conduct. But here is a classic example of the purposive approach: purpose was used to interpret the text under consideration, rather than the other way around.

Justice Côté in dissent, in my view, had much better of the argument. Her view was that the relevant provision had chosen the means by which to pursue the purpose of workplace safety. The text had chosen “limited means” to pursue that purpose—by limiting fines to employers (see West Fraser, at para 107). This is a classic dispute between ulterior and implementational purposes.

Justice Côté’s view has recently been picked up in recent Supreme Court cases and in cases in the Federal Court of Appeal. I cite two examples here. First is Telus v Wellman, which I wrote about here. There, the dispute was what purpose should be chosen: for the majority, the purpose of the Arbitration Act, as directly reflected in the relevant statutory provisions, was that the Act ensures that parties abide by their agreements. But in dissent, Abella and Karakatsanis JJ would have pitched the purpose of the statute at the level of “access to justice.” Moldaver J in majority rejected the dissent’s characterization, holding that this purpose could “distort the actual words of the statute” (Telus, at para 79). The access to justice purpose was not rooted in statute. Moldaver J, then, could be said to adopt a position closer to Cote J in West Fraser, and closer to the textualist position identified by Scalia & Garner.

Similarly, in Hillier, Justice Stratas rejected the Attorney General’s attempt to cast a statute at the high level of abstraction of “administrative efficiency.” Rather, he concluded that not “every section in the Act is aimed at furthering efficiency” (Hillier, at para 35). Rather, the relevant provision under interpretation “pursues a different, more limited purpose” (Hillier, at para 35). That limited purpose governed, not the abstract purpose chosen by the Attorney General.

In these cases, the Supreme Court and the Federal Court of Appeal corrects the error in West Fraser. And here is a good point to say why it is that the textualist approach adopted by Moldaver J and Stratas JA is preferable. First, as noted above, a liberal application of the purposive approach could lead to high error costs. By prioritizing ulterior motive over implementational purpose (abstract versus specific purposes), the court could fail to understand how and why a statute achieves a particular goal. In other words, reasoning backwards from purpose (as McLachlin CJ did in West Fraser) could lead to ignoring what the text actually says, and how the text decides to pursue a particular goal. For McLachlin CJ in West Fraser, it was of no moment that the relevant provision only applied to employers. But this was the interpretive dispute at hand. The interpretive approach in West Fraser, in this sense, ignores the import of the text.

Secondly, and pragmatically, choosing more abstract purposes of statutes over more implementational ones does not actually help the interpretive task. To say that the purpose of a statute is “access to justice” will rarely do anything to determine how the text is actually supposed to be interpreted. This is because there are many different ways that a statute can methodologically choose to pursue access to justice. More likely, abstract, ulterior purposes can be used to distort text to achieve policy outcomes the interpreter likes. This is profoundly violative of the Rule of Law.

And finally, as Scalia & Garner note, perhaps the most important interpretive canon is that one which says that “[t]he words of a governing text are of paramount concern, and what they convey, in their context is what the text means” (Scalia & Garner, at 56). This sentiment has been expressed by the Supreme Court of Canada, particularly where text is “clear” (see Celgene, at para 21). It is as old as Justinian’s Digests (“A verbis legis non est recedendum”). A powerful principle of democracy justifies the canon. It is, after all, text which is enacted by our democratic institutions. Purpose should revolve around text, such that the purpose with the most reflection in text should govern. Sourcing text from purpose risks prioritizing an ideal with little democratic pedigree over the specific and finely-wrought means by which the text enacts that purpose.

Overall, and while no Canadian court will probably ever describe itself as textualist, courts in Canada are increasingly looking to text to discern purpose. In my view, this is a salutary development.