The hopeless search for 'true' questions of jurisdiction

The Supreme Court of Canada has repeatedly said since Dunsmuir that there is a category of 'true' questions of jurisdiction. When responding to these questions administrative decision-makers must answer correctly, or face substitution of judicial judgment by the courts.

However, the Court has yet to identify a 'true' question of jurisdiction. This is not terribly surprising. The difficulty in identifying 'true' questions of jurisdiction is that most questions that one would -- if pressed -- identify as jurisdictional involve interpretations of a decision-maker's constitutive statute or a statute closely related to its function, interpretations which attract a presumption that reasonableness is the appropriate standard of review (see here at para. 16). Indeed, the retention of the category of 'true' jurisdictional questions is at war with the Court's promotion of deference.