Steering Charter Claims in the Right Direction

Williams v. British Columbia (Superintendent of Motor Vehicles), 2012 BCSC 1976 featured an unsuccessful argument that the respondent, the statutory decision-maker who follows up on road-side penalties administered by the provincial police force, had jurisdiction to grant Charter remedies.

Section 1 of the Charter: A (Con)Way Out of the Morass?

Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms provides that any infringement of a Charter right must be "prescribed by law", a requirement that must be satisfied by the government before an application of the proportionality test. The jurisprudence on section 1 is very messy and has been criticized. Indeed, the Supreme Court of Canada mentioned this criticism in its decision in Doré v. Barreau du Québec, 2012 SCC 12. It even relied on the criticism to justify overruling its previous decision in Multani (see my earlier post here). The funny thing is that the basic problem is not solved by Doré. I am going to suggest, however, that the Court's earlier decision in R. v. Conway, 2010 SCC 22 might point a way out of the morass.