Category Archives: Supreme Court (Canada)

“Foreseeable Natural Death” in Bill C-14: An Unclear and Undue Restriction?

Guest post by Michael Nafi, Department of Humanities, Philosophy and Religion, John Abbott College 

Bill C-14 on Medical Assistance in Dying has given rise to much debate in the Canadian House of Commons, in the mainstream media and various blogs, with both consensus and dissension stretching across the French/English language divide. The tide is unlikely to subside as the Bill moves to the Senate. Furthermore, as the parliamentary session nears its end, speculations abound on the fate of the Bill after the Liberal majority government today missed the June 6th deadline for its required legislative response to the Supreme Court (SCC) ruling in Carter v. Canada.

Critics have pointed out a number of shortcomings of the Bill and called for a number of amendments. However, regardless of the final form the law might take, there can be little doubt that the issue of medical assistance in dying will be revisited in the future on at least two fronts: i) the exclusion of persons under the age of 18 from such medical assistance and ii) the rejection of the possibility for persons who anticipate a deterioration of their health to provide advance directives to end their life in the future.… Continue reading

Trudeau on Secession

Posted by on | Canada, law, political philosophy, politics, Quebec, Supreme Court (Canada), Uncategorized

So, my stint at L’actualité is over. It was terrific, but very time consuming. I promised myself that I would stay quiet this summer and focus on a book manuscript, but the urge to respond to Trudeau’s attack on Mulcair regarding the Supreme Court’s Reference on Quebec secession was too strong. I wrote an op-ed for the Ottawa Citizen. I should have added that there is another aspect of the Scottish referendum that I think should act as precedent: the agreement of both parties on the wording of the question. A question on secession should not be convoluted. The Brits and the Scots, at least with regard to the basic rules of the referendum, acted as grown ups. Our leaders should emulate them.

 

Ottawa Citizen… Continue reading

What Did Loyola Really Decide?

Posted by on | Canada, education, multiculturalism, Quebec, Supreme Court (Canada)

My first serious engagement in public policy matters occurred in 1997 when I was asked to join the Groupe de travail sur la place de la religion à l’école publique du Québec. Our mandate was to reflect on the place that religious teaching should have in Quebec’s public schools. Quebec was already in the process of eliminating religious school boards, but that administrative measure left untouched the content of religious teaching in Quebec’s public schools. Parents of a certain age will remember that for a number of years, they were required to tick off a box when signing their kids up for school indicating whether they wanted them to receive Catholic religious teaching, Protestant religious teaching, or non-confessional moral education.

That situation was clearly unstable. First, now that schools in the public system were no longer Catholic or Protestant, it required of each school that it provide three different kinds of course, a logistical nightmare for resource-strapped public schools.… Continue reading

Physician-Assisted Dying: What Now?

Posted by on | Canada, criminal justice, health care, public policy, Quebec, Supreme Court (Canada)

Five years ago, I agreed to join an “expert panel” of the Royal Society of Canada. Our mandate was to provide a broad assessment of end-of-life care in Canada, and to make recommendations on how it might be improved. One of the recommendations that we made in our 2011 report was that there was no ethical justification for the maintenance of the criminal prohibition preventing physicians from helping their critically ill patients to die a dignified death, one that conformed to their wishes, and avoided them needless suffering.

I was therefore naturally very pleased when the Supreme Court of Canada issued its judgement in the Carter case, declaring that those articles of the Criminal Code were incompatible with Canadians’ Section 7 rights to life, liberty and security of person. Looking back at the 1993 decision in which a 5-4 majority had ruled that those articles were not in fact unconstitutional, a unanimous Court this time argued, in essence, that the empirical environment in which it was now being asked to render judgment had changed.… Continue reading

Thinking about Secession in Catalonia

Posted by on | Canada, political philosophy, politics, Quebec, Supreme Court (Canada)

I’m in Barcelona for a couple of weeks, teaching an accelerated seminar in the European MA program at Pompeu Fabra University. Yeah, I know, tough life.

Shortly before my arrival, requests for interviews with major Spanish newspapers started filling my inbox. Well, “filling” may be a bit too strong a word. I actually received three such requests, but they were from major outlets such as El Pais, a major national paper, and Aran, a newish paper started by Catalan separatists. They all wanted me to comment on recent events in Catalonia. (A referendum of sorts was held here on November 9th. The Spanish constitutional court deemed it illegal, and so it ended up being a bit of a non-event, with slightly under 40% of eligible voters turning up to vote in what had been downgraded to a “participatory consultation”. The “yes” option received a resounding majority of votes from those who showed up.… Continue reading

A quiet loss for refugees

Posted by on | Canada, criminal justice, immigration, inequality, Supreme Court (Canada)

Today the Supreme Court of Canada handed down an important decision about refugee claimants with criminal records.

Obviously, that’s a tough sell. With so many people in the world whose basic human rights are not protected by their home states (about 15 million at last count), advocating for the tiny subset of refugees who have been convicted of a crime is not easy.

The arguments in their favour, however, are familiar to us, even though they come with an echo of a kinder and gentler time. There are two principal reasons why we forgive criminals: rehabilitation and atonement. That is, our criminal justice system echoes these two ideas at many levels. A commitment to rehabilitation means believing that people can change, and can return to being productive members of society. A commitment to atonement means that we embrace that idea that those who have ‘done their time’ or ‘paid their dues’ should be free to resume their place as members of society.… Continue reading

Droit et démocratie: un gouvernement des juges ? (Partie 2)

Posted by on | Canada, law, political philosophy, Quebec, Supreme Court (Canada)

Comme je l’ai esquissé dans la première partie, la souveraineté populaire et la représentation démocratique d’un côté, et l’État de droit et les droits fondamentaux de l’autre, peuvent être vus comme les deux constellations de principes qui fondent la légitimité des régimes démocratiques contemporains. Il s’agit de deux logiques distinctes qui, bien que complémentaires, s’entrechoquent régulièrement. Alors que la souveraineté populaire stipule que le peuple doit être la source ultime des lois, les principes de l’État de droit et de respect des droits fondamentaux impliquent plutôt que l’exercice du pouvoir se fasse en conformité avec une constitution et que certaines normes doivent être à l’abri de la volonté de la majorité et du gouvernement au pouvoir. Comme on voit mal à partir de quel point de vue nous pourrions établir la priorité de l’une des logiques par rapport à l’autre, il vaut mieux les voir comme également fondamentales et en tension perpétuelle.… Continue reading

Droit et démocratie: un gouvernement des juges ? (Partie 1)

Posted by on | Canada, law, political philosophy, Supreme Court (Canada)

L’idée que le Canada soit gouverné par des juges et que l’équilibre des pouvoirs entre le judicaire et l’exécutif ait été rompu est vue comme une vérité évidente dans certains milieux intellectuels et politiques québécois. La Cour suprême du Canada aurait, depuis 1982, usurpé le pouvoir de nos représentants dûment élus. Le blogueur de L‘Actualité Frédéric Bastien répète cette idée comme un mantra. Dans son dernier billet, il implore le Parti conservateur d’utiliser le pouvoir de dérogation pour ignorer les jugements, dont ceux sur les centres d’injection supervisée et sur les maisons closes, qui lui déplaisent.

Comme je l’ai déjà avancé, les critiques de l’ « activisme judicaire » doivent nous expliquer comment ils conçoivent le rapport entre le droit et la démocratie ou entre, d’un côté, l’État de droit et les droits fondamentaux de la personne et, de l’autre, la souveraineté populaire et le pouvoir du parlement.… Continue reading

Un nouveau paradigme pour le droit autochtone?

Par auteur invité Martin Papillon

Ça y est, c’est fait. La Cour suprême a reconnu pour la première fois à une nation autochtone un titre ancestral sur ses terres traditionnelles. La nation Tsilhqot’in est donc en quelque sorte propriétaire de plus de 2000 km2 dans le centre de la Colombie-Britannique. Elle pourra ainsi gérer ces terres à sa guise et, surtout, en bénéficier de manière exclusive.

Cette décision de la Cour suprême a fait couler beaucoup d’encre. Plusieurs commentateurs parlent de révolution, d’autres d’une décision aux conséquences dramatiques pour l’économie du pays. Plusieurs s’interrogent en particulier sur l’impact de cette décision sur les projets d’oléoducs, en pensant au controversé projet Northern Gateway, qui vient tout juste de recevoir l’approbation du gouvernement fédéral.  Qu’en est-il au juste? Cette décision change-t-elle radicalement le rapport de force entre les peuples autochtones, l’État canadien et les principaux acteurs de l’économie extractive?

Il faut d’abord préciser que cette décision est loin d’être une surprise.… Continue reading

Still Not Fixed

Posted by on | Canada, law, Supreme Court (Canada)

The crisis provoked by the Prime Minister’s malicious accusations about the Chief Justice has left the front pages. And while there has been some backtracking, the record has not been set straight. So I thought it would still be worth posting the link to this letter from leaders in Canada’s legal community. Take a look here.

There is almost nothing else to be said about this particular bit of craziness as an unusually high number of excellent articles about it have run in the mainstream press across the country, and in many other places besides. My point is simply not to let this become one more thing that we almost forget in the long string of reprehensible actions by this government.

The Prime Minister’s actions in this case demonstrate a basic disrespect for the rule of law, unprecedented in the long history of the relationship between the judiciary and the executive in this country.… Continue reading