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In recent years, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (the “Charter”) has been relied on increasingly by Canadian courts to bolster common law police powers, often at the expense of due process. Ostensibly, the courts have shown more concern with the administration of the limits of policing than with the delineation of civil liberties. In this article, we trace the evolution of the interpretation of the Charter in this context, with early decisions suggesting a reluctance to create ex post facto police powers. The article then outlines the acceleration of judicial proliferation of common law police powers in Canada, cloaked in the veil of the Charter. In other words, unauthorized police conduct is legitimized by the courts on an ad hoc basis, so long as it is ultimately justifiable. We then discuss the findings of our own research into this phenomenon and comment on the possible implications that increasingly expansive common law police powers created by courts have had on due process in Canada, and the administrative role of the Supreme Court of Canada in mobilizing civil rights protections in the direction of state surveillance.

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During the last two decades, the Supreme Court of Canada created and authorized new police powers that are exercised routinely. For example, the Court authorized police officers to stop motor vehicles at random, detain individuals for investigative purposes, and carry out preventive frisk searches on people. The Court stated that judges can use the “ancillary powers doctrine” to create new police powers that fill legislative gaps.

According to police-reported data, impaired driving killed as many as 155 people in Canada in 2019 (88 impaired drivers1 and 67 other road users) and injured 540.2 By comparison, all other criminal offences causing death excluding homicide resulted in the deaths of 108 people in 2019. Furthermore, a 2013 study for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) Canada estimated that the total social costs associated with impaired driving were $20.6 billion (Pitel and Solomon 2013). [...]before cannabis became legal, police services in Canada were already stopping an increasing number of drug-impaired drivers (Moreau 2019; Perreault 2016).3 So, to coincide with legalization, the Government of Canada implemented measures to fight drug-impaired driving. When collection of comparable data began in 1986, police reported 577 incidents per 100,000 population. [...]the early 2000s, this rate declined by an average of 5.5% each year, before stabilizing at about 250 incidents per 100,000 population during the 2000s.

Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.

Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.

Purposive interpretation leads a double life. As a matter of constitutional practice, it forms the doctrine through which courts in Canada and around the world determine the concrete protections that abstract constitutional rights afford. However, as a matter of constitutional theory, purposive interpretation is routinely rejected as either an empty phrase that offers no alternative to established theories of constitutional interpretation or a dangerous doctrine that provides no basis for distinguishing between justified and unjustified interpretations of constitutional rights. This essay formulates a conception of purposive interpretation that is not vulnerable to these objections. The purposive approach to the interpretation of constitutional rights follows from a set of ideas about how legal interpretation differs from interpretation more broadly, how constitutional interpretation differs from interpretation in other legal domains, and how constitutional interpretation constrains both the purposes it attributes to particular provisions and the application of those purposes to particular contexts. My aim is to show that these ideas fit together in a coherent doctrinal whole that is neither empty nor dangerous. Purposive interpretation is not empty because it offers a genuine alternative to the presuppositions and structure of opposing interpretive paradigms. Purposive interpretation is not dangerous because it provides a principled set of resources for distinguishing between justified and unjustified interpretations.

While the interpretation of Canadian constitutional laws has long been carried by a teleological wave, a textualist backlash has emerged in recent years. This article questions this trend and argues that the teleological method remains the most appropriate for constitutional interpretation.

Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.

Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.

The lawyer’s duty to encourage respect for the administration of justice remains largely amorphous and abstract. In this article, I draw lessons about this duty from historical instances in which Attorneys General inappropriately criticized judges. Not only are Attorneys General some of the highest-profile lawyers in the country, but they also face unique tensions and pressures that bring their duties as lawyers into stark relief. I focus on the two instances where law societies sought to discipline Attorneys General for such criticism of judges, as well as a more recent instance in which no discipline proceedings were pursued. I also consider the obligations of Attorneys General when other Ministers inappropriately criticize judges. I conclude that a lawyer must take all reasonable steps in the circumstances to confirm the factual and legal accuracy of any criticism of the judiciary; that law societies should allow reasonable but defined latitude for public criticism of judges; and that, where a client inappropriately criticizes the judiciary, their lawyer must make good-faith efforts to urge the client to discontinue and apologize for such criticism—and if those efforts are unsuccessful, the lawyer must repudiate that criticism themselves or withdraw.

[From Introduction]Inherent in our constitutional right to a jury trial in criminal cases—for offences where imprisonment for five years or more is a possible sentence— is the right to have jurors who are our “peers” and “equals.” This right can be traced back to 1215 when King John signed the Magna Carta to make peace with the wealthy men of England.The route from the Magna Carta to Canadian criminal law in the early twenty-first century is long and convoluted, and extra twists and turns are added when we consider the use of juries in Canada’s North. Here, where the effects of colonialism are still felt on a daily basis, and where communities from which a jury might be drawn sometimes number only a few hundred persons, the ability to obtain a jury comprised of “the peers” of our clients, who are usually Indigenous, can be challenging and sometimes difficult. In this article I offer my perspective, as a practising criminal defence lawyer in the Northwest Territories, on the challenges we face in trying to obtain juries that truly represent the communities from which our clients originate. ... ...More

Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.

Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.

Disclaimer: This summary was generated by AI based on the content of the source document.