Category: Leading Supreme Court Cases

The Court set aside decisions of the CBC and Montreal Port Authority in which they determined the tax rate they would pay to the city of montreal. Although the respondents had a discretion they had to exercise it in accordance with the statute and regulations and intention of the legislature.

The individual must know the case he has to meet. If the decision-maker fails to provide sufficient information, his decision is void for lack of jurisdiction. In order to assure the fairness of decisions concerning inmates, s. 27(1) of the CCRA requires that CSC give the inmate, at a reasonable period before the decision is to be taken, “all the information to be considered in the taking of the decision or a summary of that information”. Here, CSC’s failure to disclose the scoring matrix which was available at the relevant time, despite several requests by the inmates, was a clear breach of procedural fairness and of its statutory duty of disclosure. This information was not a duplication of information already disclosed. Without the scoring matrix which provides information on the numerical values to be assigned to each factor and to the manner in which a final score is generated by the computerized tool, the inmates were deprived of information essential to understanding the computerized system which generated their scores and were prevented from formulating a meaningful response to the reclassification decisions.

The Court judicially reviewed the appointment of arbitrators by the Minister of Labour. The Court held that the Minister erred in failing to require that the arbitrators had the necessary expertise in labour relations. The case is interesting for its analysis of the review of exercise of discretion.

The Court held that if an administrative tribunal could consider and decide legal questions it was a court of competent jurisdiction for the purpose of providing a charter remedy.

The Supreme Court held that the Appellant was not detained at the airport when he ws subjected to secondary examination by an immigration officer and that he therefore had no right to counsel.

The Court held that the conduct of Canadian officials acting outside of Canada would only be subject to Charter scrutiny if the foreign state concurred in its application or if the conduct violated international law or human rights norms.

The Court held that the Charter applied to the action of Canadian officials outside of Canada where the conduct was inconsistent with Canada's international human rights obligations. It held that the Government was obliged to disclose the content of its interrogations of Khadr to him.

The Court discussed the application of issue estoppel in a criminal context.

The Court held that the doctrine of issue estoppel had to be applied flexibly so as to avoid real injustice.

The Supreme Court held that state complicity is not a requirement in order to be able to obtain refugee protection.