Constitutional Forum (Journal)
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No full textA great unacknowledged challenge in litigating systemic discrimination claims under the section 15 equality guarantee of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms1 is that claimants bear a double burden. Like all litigants, they must meet the burden of proving the elements of their legal claim. But, before they can do that, equality claimants must often first meet the extraordinary burden of dislodging judges’ phenomenological anchoring in worldviews shaped by privilege. Where judges lack lived experience of systemic oppression, claimants must convince them that oppression exists. This gulf between lived experiences — what I call the reality gap — is the elephant in the room in many section 15 cases.
1 s 15, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11
Intersections and Roads Untravelled: Sex and Family Status in Fraser v Canada
No full textIt has been a long road to the judicial recognition of women’s inequality under the Cana‑ dian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.1 The Supreme Court of Canada ruling in Fraser v Can‑ ada is significant for being the first decision where a majority of the Court found adverse effects discrimination based on sex under section 15,2 and it was only two years prior that a claim of sex discrimination in favour of women was finally successful at the Court,3 almost 30 years after their first section 15 decision in Andrews v Law Society of British Columbia. 4
1 Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11 [Charter], s 15. 2 Fraser v Canada (Attorney General), 2020 SCC 28 [Fraser]. 3 Quebec (Attorney General) v Alliance du personnel professionnel et technique de la santé et des services sociaux, 2018 SCC 17 [Alliance] (majority found sex discrimination under s 15 and rejected the government’s justification argument under s 1 in the pay equity context). See also Centrale des syndicats du Québec v Quebec (Attorney General), 2018 SCC 18 [Centrale] (majority found violation of s 15 but accepted the government’s s 1 argument, also in the pay equity context). For comments on these decisions see Fay Faraday, “One Step Forward, Two Steps Back? Substantive Equality, Systemic Discrimination and Pay Equity at the Supreme Court of Canada” (2020) 94 SCLR (2d) 301; Jonnette Watson Hamilton & Jennifer Koshan, “Equality Rights and Pay Equity: Déjà Vu in the Supreme Court of Canada” (2019) 15 JL & Equality 1. See also British Columbia Teachers’ Federation v British Columbia Public School Employers’ Association, 2014 SCC 70 (a one-paragraph decision restoring an arbitrator’s award allowing a s 15 employment benefits claim by women); Newfoundland (Treasury Board) v NAPE, 2004 SCC 66 (finding a violation of s 15 but accepting the government’s s 1 argument, again in the pay equity context).4 [1989] 1 SCR 143, 56 DLR (4th) 1
English
No full textIn this brief comment, I contextualise and complicate the conventional reading of Fraser v Canada as a victory for equality seeking groups.1 Instead, or at least alongside that reading, I want to suggest some other stories about the trajectory of equality in Canada since the Charter2 era began, and about what future doctrinal developments Fraser might lead us to predict.
1 Fraser v Canada (Attorney General), 2020 SCC 28 [Fraser]. 2 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982, being Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982 (UK), 1982, c 11
English
No full textRecent debates in the United States and Canada bear witness to a renewed interest in the moral foundations of legal interpretation. This article offers a contribution to the ongoing debate in Canadian legal circles, responding to critiques by Leonid Sirota and Mark Mancini of the emergent theories of “common good originalism” and “common good constitutionalism”. Contrary to our interlocutors’ view, the natural law tradition does not “look to extraneous moral and policy commitments as guides for legal interpretation” nor does it see the law as a mere instrument to achieve “pre-determined outcomes.” Rather, it regards the positive law and natural law as reciprocally interrelated; natural law lends intelligibility to the positive law, while positive law makes concrete the abstract precepts of natural law. This perspective provides valuable insights into the activity of legal interpretation, as directed toward understanding and giving effect to the legislature’s reasoned choices for the common good
Harnessing Distrust and the Power of Intercession for the Separation of Powers
No full textIn what follows, I reflect on themes arising from my reading of Jacob Levy’s The Separation of Powers and the Challenge to Constitutional Democracy. According to Levy, the separation of powers in contemporary constitutional democracies is failing, thus endangering the rule of law. Briefly, this is because political parties have bridged the gap between the legislature and the executive: by giving rise to partisan politics that cross the institutional divide, political parties have dampened, if not disabled, the institutional incentive and motivation of the legislature to keep the executive in check. Furthermore, when this is combined with the myth of the united and undifferentiated people, which the executive, populistically, can easily claim to embody, the simple act of opposing the executive may be framed as seditious. In the end, the power of the executive is set free by the partisan loyalty of fellow party members and by the framing of opposition as disloyal and deleterious to the polity
Restricting Freedom of Peaceful Assembly During Public Health Emergencies
No full textAs the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada continues, so too does litigation challenging policies intended to slow the spread of the virus. A growing number of claimants have argued that these sweeping public health measures — many of them drastic and previously unimaginable — infringe various provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.1 While a significant number of claims have been brought pursuant to protections that support a sustained body of jurisprudence, litigants may yet seek to explore some of the more forgotten sections of the Charter, particularly section 2(c)’s guarantee of freedom of peaceful assembly. In an effort to encourage the development of a body of jurisprudence on section 2(c), this article envisions how such Charter challenges might unfold
Checking the Other and Checking the Self: Role Morality and the Separation of Powers
No full textThe concepts of the rule of law, the separation of powers, and checks and balances are related in complicated ways. Jacob T Levy brings this to light in his thought-provoking McDonald Lecture, “The Separation of Powers and the Challenge to Constitutional Democracy.”1 In this response to Levy’s paper I want to further explore the relationship between these three ideas. I will argue that, when thinking about the rule of law, we must consider the idea of “role morality” and its place in constraining power. We should think of the constraints on power that stem from role morality as “internal” as opposed to “external” checks on power. I also suggest that we would do well to broaden our understanding of what the rule of law requires, and to think of it not just as a matter of ensuring impartiality and formal legal equality in the sense that the law applies to all actors within the system. We might benefit from thinking of the rule of law as a weightier moral concept that demands that decision-makers comply with moral ideals, and not just with the rules as laid out