scholarly journals The Power of Legal and Historical Fiction(s): The Daniels Decision and the Enduring Influence of Colonial Ideology

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brenda Macdougall
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Linguistic Meaning ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Canadian Society ◽  
Historical Evidence ◽  
The Past ◽  
Law And Policy ◽  
The Supreme Court

It’s been several months since the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) rendered its judgment in Daniels v. Canada (2016), affirming that the term “Indian” in s. 91(24) of the Constitution Act (1867) includes Métis and Non-Status Indians. There is a general hope that the decision marks a turning point for Métis and Non-Status Indians within Canada’s colonial structures. I’m not certain this optimism is justified. The judgment was reached based on the types of historical evidence presented and, consequently, there are a couple of statements within the written judgment that give me pause to question how the evidence regarding the histories of Métis and Non-Status Indians were presented to, and then interpreted by, the justices. Bearing in mind that the crux of the case rested on the linguistic meaning and evolution of the term “Indian” in Canadian society through law and policy, evidence was introduced about how the term was used at various points in the past, as well as the context of that usage in order to demonstrate the evolution of a Canadian legal and historical fiction that increasingly restricted the idea of what an Indian was. What the SCC did with the Daniels Decision is reverse that restrictive trend for Indians while constructing new problems.

scholarly journals The Incremental Evolution of National Receivership Law and the Elusive Search for Federal Purpose

2017 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Roderick J Wood
Keyword(s):  
Supreme Court ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Insolvency Law ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Incremental Evolution ◽  
Federal Statute

There was a period when provincial legislation that trespassed too deeply into the federal field of bankruptcy and insolvency law was likely to be declared to be ultra vires as an invasion of the exclusive federal power in relation to that field. The five-to-four split in the 1978 Supreme Court of Canada decision in Robinson v Countrywide Factors Ltd was very much a turning point. Thereafter, the constitutionality of provincial legislation was almost invariably determined through the application of the paramountcy principle. Pursuant to this principle, a provincial statute is rendered inoperative to the extent that it conflicts with the federal statute. The Supreme Court of Canada has created a two-branched test for determining the presence of a conflict. Under the first branch, there is an operational conflict when it is impossible to comply with both the federal and the provincial statute. Under the second branch, there is a conflict when the operation of the provincial statute frustrates the purpose of the federal statute. Either type of conflict will render the provincial statute inoperative...

scholarly journals A Decade Later: The Legacy of the Supreme Court of Canada's Health Services Decision on Workers' Rights

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Brad Walchuk
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Constitutional Rights ◽  
Canadian Charter ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Financial Penalty

The year 2017 marked the ten-year anniversary of the Health Services case, a precedent-setting decision by the Supreme Court of Canada that ruled collective bargaining is protected by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This article explores the impact and legacy of BC Health Services, and finds that while workers’ constitutional rights have been expanded under the Charter over the past decade, governments nevertheless continue to violate these rights. It concludes that the legacy of the case is not an enhanced level of protection for these rights to be enjoyed fully, but rather that the default option has been and will continue to be a financial penalty for the state in instances in which they violate workers’ rights.  KEYWORDS  labour rights; Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms; human rights; health services

scholarly journals Restitution of Unlawfully Levied Taxes: Survey and Comparative Analysis of Developments in Canada, Australia, and England

1969 ◽  
pp. 960 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frédéric Bachand
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Common Law ◽  
General Rule ◽  
Supreme Court Of Canada ◽  
Public Authorities ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Common

The common law traditionally has not been sympathetic to taxpayers wishing to recover unlawfully levied taxes from public authorities. Because a mistake of law did not, as a general rule and in itself, give rise to a right to restitution, and because courts refused to find that the mere fact that monies had been demanded by public authorities amounted to compulsion, taxpayers were often left without a remedy. Fortunately, important judicial developments have occurred in Canada, Australia, and England in the past decade. The demise of the infamous mistake of law rule and the recognition in England of the Woolwich principle have facilitated the recovery of unlawfully levied taxes. Yet, these developments have revealed profound differences as to which defences should be made available to public authorities. The "fiscal chaos" and "passing on" defences proposed by three Justices of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Air Canada case have not been well received in Australia and England. This article traces the evolution of the traditional common law approach to the problem of unlawfully levied taxes, offers a survey of the judicial developments in this area since the past decade and proposes a comparative analysis of the approaches adopted in each jurisdiction.

Summary of Results

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Kuenzler
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Property ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
Government Agencies ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Trademark Law ◽  
Intellectual Property Law ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The Government ◽  
Networked Economy

The persuasive force of the accepted account’s property logic has driven antitrust and intellectual property law jurisprudence for at least the past three decades. It has been through the theory of trademark ownership and the commercial strategy of branding that these laws led the courts to comprehend markets as fundamentally bifurcated—as operating according to discrete types of interbrand and intrabrand competition—a division that had an effect far beyond the confines of trademark law and resonates today in the way government agencies and courts evaluate the emerging challenges of the networked economy along the previously introduced distinction between intertype and intratype competition. While the government in its appeal to the Supreme Court in ...

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