Be-BAPE-A-Lula

One of the more interesting political stories in Québec at the moment involves the new environment minister, Daniel Breton and the Bureau d'audiences publiques sur l'environnement. On a visit to the BAPE's offices in October, Breton allegedly told members of the BAPE that he would telephone the chairperson whenever the BAPE made a recommendation he disagreed with, before demanding their cell phone numbers.

Data Destruction and Public Law: Part II

You may be baffled by the gun registry decision, even having read my earlier explanatory post. You might think along the following lines: the federal government set this registry up in the first place, using its power to enact criminal laws, by making it an offence not to register certain weapons. If that is so, the federal government is surely entitled to subsequently decide to close the registry and destroy the data. They made it, so they can unmake it, right? You can't just leave all that data lying around!

Data Destruction and Public Law: Part I

Major kudos must go to the Québec government's team of lawyers, who masterminded the challenge which resulted yesterday in the grant of a permanent injunction against the destruction of the long-gun registry data by the federal authorities.

Some Recent Decisions on Regulators' Investigative Powers

A helpful way to keep up with recent legal developments in Canada is to follow the output of the country's leading law firms.

Principles of Good (Digital) Administration

One of the drivers of the development and application of doctrine in administrative law is the concept of the principles of good administration. On one view, courts and administrators work collaboratively to produce rational and efficient policies and decisions.

A Successful Closed-Mind Argument in the Citizenship Setting

A basic principle of administrative law is that a decision-maker must approach its decisions with an open mind. Demonstrating that a decision-maker had a "closed mind", however, is extremely difficult. A decision-maker bent on refusing an application come what may will, if clever enough, keep his or her prejudices to him or herself.

Changing Policy to Reflect Policy? Be Careful

As a Q.C., Rabinder Singh appeared in some of the most significant public law cases before the superior courts of England and Wales.

He was appointed to the bench in 2011. From the High Court, he recently issued an interesting judgment in H.A. (Nigeria) v. Home Secretary, [2012] EWHC 979 (Admin), a case concerning the lawfulness of the detention of an asylum seeker who suffered from mental disorders and was detained in a series of Immigration Removal Centres.

Of greatest interest is Singh J.'s treatment of an administrative policy which had been developed by the Home Secretary. The wording of the policy had been changed, but the Home Secretary argued that the change merely reflected administrative practice.

This was important because had the policy changed in substance, it would have been necessary to undertake an equality impact assessment; none had been conducted.

Singh J. held that a material change, requiring an assessment, had occurred, whatever the subjective intention of those involved:

1. In my judgement there was a change in at least the stated policy. There was obviously a change of wording, in other words a reformulation of it. Even if the Defendant did not intend that to be a substantive change in her own policy, there are two reasons why the public sector equality duties were triggered by that reformulation. The first is that the meaning of a policy is an objective matter: whatever the subjective intentions of its authors, the formulation matters because the words which express a policy affect the public, not just officials within a department, for example individuals who are liable to detention and those who advise them. The reason why public law has in recent years come to recognise the importance of adherence (in general) to policy statements is that they serve an important function in maintaining the rule of law, which is of particular importance when fundamental rights such as the right to personal liberty are at stake. 

1. The second reason is that, even on the Defendant's own evidence, she was seeking to reformulate the policy to re-align it to what had been thought within the department to be its practice all along. The courts had given an interpretation to the policy which did not accord with the practice of the Defendant's department. But that is implicitly to acknowledge that in fact there was a change of policy if not of practice. It was common ground before me that, in the present context at least, the meaning of a policy is ultimately a question for the courts, not one for the executive. If that is right, then when the words of a policy are altered, that is a change in policy. It was clearly intended to have some effect, otherwise it would have been a pointless exercise.

These comments on the interpretation of policies being wholly in the domain of the courts are very English (whenever I get around to my promised discussion of Auer deference, the difference of the American approach will be manifest). But the fundamental point is that when administrative policies change, the administrator in question is placed under a variety of public law duties, which are perilous to ignore.

Due Process and Drone Strikes

Last week, the New York Times published a lengthy article on the 'secret kill list' being maintained by President Obama. Whatever the merits of targeted killings as a matter of international law, international human rights law, or justice, for students of administrative law, there are at least three aspects of interest to the story. To be clear, in what follows, I am not taking a position on the legality or morality of the strikes. But in the absence of formal due process through judicial review, it is worth considering the internal safeguards that administrative law norms suggest.

Unequal Treatment of Local Government Taxpayers in North America

The highest courts of both the United States and Canada have both recently pronounced on claims relating to the unfairness of local government taxation systems. Before the Supreme Court of Canada, the argument went to the substantive reasonableness of the municipal by-law at issue. Further south, the Supreme Court of the United States was asked to find a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Doctrinally, the cases are distinct, but the striking similarity of the issues engaged and the results reached makes for an interesting comparison.

La cohérence décisionnelle en droit administratif

Je pensais de garder cette décision jusqu’au retour en classe des étudiants du préscolaire à la fin de l’été, mais finalement j’ai conclu que les principes découlant de ladite décision sont trop intéressants pour les cacher plus longtemps. La Cour d’appel y explique très clairement les principes de la révision judiciaire au Québec.

Environmental Reform in Canada

The federal government's use of an omnibus budget bill to enact measures affecting a variety of different areas has come under sustained attack (you can also listen to the comments of my colleague, Stéphane Beaulac, from the three-minute mark here).

Whatever one thinks about the substance of the underlying reforms, one can certainly quibble about the process the federal government has followed. Exposing the relevant provisions to the usual process of parliamentary scrutiny would hardly hurt and may even help the overhaul the federal government envisages.

Beyond that, however, the substance of the reforms should presumably be judged on the merits. Via Norton Rose comes an even-handed overview of the proposed changes to environmental regulation. There appears to be much give-and-take in the proposed legislation: fewer decision-makers will be obliged to conduct environmental assessments, but their decisions will now be binding rather than recommendatory; fewer effects of proposed projects are to be considered, but this seems designed to exclude consideration of matters within provincial jurisdiction; strict time-lines for decisions are imposed, but provision is made for public participation in the decision-making process; and the burden of work on the federal authorities in the environmental assessment process is reduced, but by permitting delegation to provincial authorities.

All in all, a good primer on the substance of the proposed changes. But it probably should be read in conjunction with the comments of those who fear the gutting of environmental protection.

Delegation of Law-Making Power to Private Entities

Last week the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia upheld against constitutional challenge a delegation of power to Amtrak to develop performance standards.

Why Destroying the Long-Gun Registry Data is Unconstitutional

The literature on the establishment and operation of administrative agencies is voluminous. Even the destruction of agencies – deregulation – has inspired eloquent words. Less ink has been spilled about the consequences of deregulation. The impending argument over the abolition of the Long-Gun Registry is an example of destruction and deregulation giving rise to litigation.

In this post, I argue that the means chosen by the federal government for destroying the data contained in the Long-Gun Registry is unconstitutional; Québec should, in my view, prevail in its constitutional challenge. It has already prevailed in winning an injunction preventing the destruction of the data, and the substance of its challenge will be heard shortly in the Superior Court. An appeal by the losing party to the Court of Appeal and thence the Supreme Court of Canada is inevitable, unless the federal government and Québec reach some sort of agreement in the meantime.

Of Tongues and Teeth: Sliding Scales in Judicial Review

The UK Supreme Court's decision of last week in Humphreys v Revenue Commissioners puts me to thinking about sliding scales. These are quite common in public law. At base, the idea is that greater scrutiny will be paid to decisions (or statutory provisions) in some circumstances, and less in others.

Monetizing Benefits

Interesting paper here from Arden Rowell (University of Illinois). One of the difficulties with regulators performing cost-benefit analyses lies in determining what should go into the analysis. Some things we can count quite easily: to use Rowell's example, the cost of installing rear-view cameras on cars; and the benefits in terms of lives saved (although this exercise may be controversial). Other things are harder, if not impossible, to count: the added benefit that childrens' lives will be disproportionately saved by rear-view cameras. How then, the question goes, can you conduct a cost-benefit analysis when the costs and benefits are incommensurable? Isn't the problem, at base, that regulators must make moral judgments about the weight to accord to certain types of interest, and that moral judgments cannot be quantified? Rowell suggests that regulators should attempt to partially monetize all benefits, as best they can, to conduct thorough cost-benefit analyses in the face of worries about incommensurability:

Insofar as this hesitation stems from concern about the incommensurability of money and other goods, it should cease immediately. Incommensurability does not preclude partial valuation, i.e. the partial expression of a good’s value in terms of another good. Even something as horrific and emotionally laden as the death of a child can therefore be partially monetized, i.e. partially expressed in terms of money, so long as people are willing to pay money to prevent it from occurring. Emotional goods like these are difficult to think about, and even more difficult to monetize, but refusing to monetize them at all is not a reasonable solution.

Rowell's solution would have the advantage of forcing regulators to set out their assumptions and judgments in monetary form, so as to allow a balancing of costs and benefits. Such a balancing would then be transparent and accountability would presumably be increased. But I have a nagging feeling that to assign dollar amounts in this way may serve simply to obscure the important moral judgments that have to be made by regulators.

Separate Silos

One of the reasons offered by the concurring judges in Multani for merging administrative review and constitutional review (at least when an individualized decision was challenged) was that keeping them separate and distinct would be confusing to lower courts and litigants. That view never seemed particularly compelling to me: lawyers and judges often make and are faced with arguments that overlap and complement one another.

Interestingly, in Pridgen v. University of Calgary, where students punished for making nasty comments about a professor on a Facebook group successfully sought the quashing of the disciplinary measures against them, two of the judges on the Alberta Court of Appeal expressly avoided dealing with an argument based on the Charter, preferring instead to resolve the case on administrative law grounds. Even Madam Justice Paperny, who dealt with the Charter issue (the tricky part being whether it applies at all to universities), addressed the administrative law argument separately, agreeing that the disciplinary decision was unreasonable.

Her judgment is also notable for its treatment of the reliance by the decision-maker on hearsay evidence. She correctly noted that administrative decision-makers have more leeway than courts in permitting the introduction of hearsay, but that this leeway was exceeded in the present case:

[59]           It is generally open to administrative tribunals to admit hearsay evidence. But the relaxation of the rules of evidence does not relieve an administrative decision‑maker of the responsibility to assess the quality of the evidence received in a reasonable manner in order to determine whether it can support the decision being made. And in a subsequent judicial review, the reviewing court must consider whether the decision is “one of a range of possible outcomes”, based on the evidence that was received and assessed by the decision‑maker. It is not an error for a reviewing judge to consider the quality of the evidence and the manner in which it was assessed in conducting that analysis.

[60]           The evidence on which the University relies is not merely hearsay, it is double or triple hearsay of an extremely vague nature from an unnamed source or sources. It is simply not reasonable to conclude that “injury” within the meaning of the Student Misconduct Policy has been established on the basis of the information provided to the Review Committee, and the chambers judge committed no error in reaching that conclusion.

Thus in response to the students' argument that the decision did not conform to the University's own guidelines, the University was unable to demonstrate that its reasoning was cogent or that sufficient evidence existed in support of its decision, and its decision was unreasonable.

The Charter and Administrative Adjudication

The Supreme Court of Canada has been feverishly productive in the field of administrative law since the Fall of 2011, rendering decisions on standard of review (questions of law, jurisdictional error and labour arbitrators), the right to reasons, issue estoppel, attempts to pre-empt the administrative decision-making process, and review of municipal by-laws. Plenty of grist for my mill over the coming weeks and months.

To my mind, the most dramatic of these recent decisions is that of a unanimous Court in Doré v. Barreau du Québec. Dramatic because the Court overruled a recent precedent, Multani, itself merely the confirmation of a consistent line of reasoning which can be traced back to the Court's decision in Slaight Communications v. Davidson. And the most dramatic because it has implications both for how administrative decision-makers consider Charter arguments and how courts should approach applications for judicial review on the basis that Charter rights were infringed by an administrative decision-maker.

Briefly, a majority of the Court held in Multani that administrative law and constitutional law must be distinguished. When a legislative provision expressly or implicitly infringes a Charter right, the applicant must challenge the validity of the provision in question. When the source of the alleged infringement is the exercise of a discretionary power, the applicant must challenge the validity of the exercise of the discretionary power. This can be accomplished in one of two ways: the applicant can argue on classic administrative law grounds that the power was exercised in an illegal, unreasonable or procedurally unfair manner; or the applicant can argue on constitutional law grounds that the power infringed his or her Charter rights in a disproportionate manner. There were two sets of concurring reasons disagreeing with the analytical approach of the majority, one authored by Justice Abella (joined by Justice Deschamps) and the other authored by Justice LeBel. If the two sets of concurring reasons could be said to have a common theme, it was that the proportionality test applied to determine the proportionality of infringements of Charter rights was inappropriate where the applicant challenged an individualized decision rather than a legislative provision.

In Doré Justice Abella's vision of the relationship of the Charter and administrative law won out. The applicant was a lawyer who was reprimanded by his regulatory association for writing an intemperate letter to a trial judge with whom he had locked horns. The dispute between the two was extremely heated, but the letter was not made publicly available. The lawyer did not challenge the validity of the Code of Ethics under which he was punished, but challenged the decision as a violation of his right to freedom of expression.

Justice Abella was able to draw on significant academic authority for her decision to over-rule a very recent precedent, noting that the commentary post-Multani has been "consistently critical" (at para. 33). I have argued in Chapter 5 of my forthcoming book, A Theory of Deference in Administrative Law, that the Court got it right in Multani, but it seems I may be in a minority of one! This is not the place to detail those arguments, but it is worth noting a couple of mis-steps on Justice Abella's part. For one thing, at para. 52, she wrongly conflates the application of the proportionality test with review for correctness. It is in fact a review for proportionality, not correctness, and does not allow the reviewing court to step into the shoes of a decision-maker exercising a discretionary power. Why? The correct interpretation of the Charter is that proportionate limitations on rights are acceptable, not that whenever a Charter challenge is made the reviewing court must substitute its judgment for that of the decision-maker. For another, at para. 56, she takes the most deferential possible view of the proportionality test (that an infringement is proportionate if it falls within a range of reasonable alternatives), in order to suggest a commonality between review for proportionality and review for unreasonableness. But viewed in the round, the multi-pronged proportionality test is much more rigorous than review for unreasonableness. It is hard to see how the purposes of the Charter are served by lowering the standard of protection afforded to Charter rights.

Nonetheless, her guidance to decision-makers is clear and cogent:

How then does an administrative decision-maker apply Charter values in the exercise of statutory discretion?   He or she balances the Charter values with the statutory objectives.  In effecting this balancing, the decision-maker should first consider the statutory objectives...Then the decision-maker should ask how the Charter value at issue will best be protected in view of the statutory objectives.  This is at the core of the proportionality exercise, and requires the decision-maker to balance the severity of the interference of the Charter protection with the statutory objectives (at paras. 55-56). 

It is hard to quibble with this approach. Administrative decision-makers ought not to be hamstrung by a requirement to conduct a formalistic inquiry into whether their decisions would survive the application of the proportionality test, as the House of Lords has recognized. Rather, they should attempt to achieve their statutory objectives with one eye on the Charter interests and other social values at play. There is no need to 'legalize' or 'judiciarize' administrative processes. Indeed, if it were desirable to do so, then the various functions of administrative decision-makers could be handed over to courts. Conscious decisions to keep matters away from the courts, at least initially, should be respected, and Justice Abella's guidance coheres with the general aim of providing non-judicial machinery for the resolution of disputes.

But applauding this aspect of Justice Abella's reasons is not to applaud her guidance to reviewing courts:

On judicial review, the question becomes whether, in assessing the impact of the relevant Charter protection and given the nature of the decision and the statutory and factual contexts, the decision reflects a proportionate balancing of the Charter protections at play...If, in exercising its statutory discretion, the decision-maker has properly balanced the relevant Charter value with the statutory objectives, the decision will be found to be reasonable (at paras. 57-58).

Instead of the rigorous, well-known and well-defined proportionality test, reviewing courts are henceforth required to conduct some sort of balancing test. Questions abound: what is a "proportionate balancing" that is not an application of the proportionality test? Is there a difference between a "proportionate balancing" and "properly balanced" and if so, what is it? What weights are to be given to the "Charter value" and the "statutory objectives"? Do different Charter values have different weights? What is the "nature of the decision" and how does it influence the analysis? Can it really be said that this formulation is adequately protective of Charter rights? It will be interesting to see how lower courts address these questions.

The ultimate conclusion in Doré is rather unsatisfactory. Justice Abella signs off by commenting that, given the "excessive degree of vituperation in the letter’s context and tone", the decision to reprimand the applicant "cannot be said to represent an unreasonable balance of Mr. Doré’s expressive rights with the statutory objectives" (at para. 71). There is much emphasis in her discussion on the need to maintain civility in the legal profession, but there is no searching analysis of the extent to which the disciplinary committee actually did consider the applicant's interests in freedom of expression. Criticism may be robust, but may not exceed the "public’s reasonable expectations of a lawyer’s professionalism" (at para. 69). However, the fact that the letter was not made publicly available does not feature in the analysis. No attention is paid to the context in which the letter was written, most likely at a time when the author's tempers were running temporarily high. Absent too is any consideration of whether a formal reprimand was necessary to achieve the statutory objectives, though this is not surprising considering the replacement of the proportionality test with a less robust balancing exercise.

The fear I express in A Theory of Deference is that the sort of approach championed by Justice Abella will be under-protective of Charter rights. Hopefully this fear will not be borne out, but Doré does not seem to represent a promising start.

A Slightly Less Cold House for Foreign Investors

One of the components of the Federal Government's omnibus budget bill, the Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, involves amendments to the Investment Canada Act. In certain circumstances, take-overs by foreign persons of Canadian corporations must be reviewed by the Minister for Industry and, if the Minister concludes that the proposed investment is not of "net benefit" to Canada, the foreigners have to remain on the outside looking in. Aliant Techsystems and BHP Billiton saw their take-over efforts run aground on the net benefit rock, as Kevin Ackhurst reminds us.

Decisions by the Minister are to be taken within 45 days, although there is a power to extend the time for decision. If the decision is negative, further submissions can be made, but the reasons for the decision need not be disclosed until a final decision is reached. Not an ideal situation for a multi-national corporation with potentially billions of dollars on the table, and not hard to perceive how this might chill the enthusiasm of foreign investors (as if it were not cold enough here already...).

Amendments to the decision-making process are now proposed, along with the introduction of a ministerial power to accept offers of security. The amendments to the decision-making process do not change the basic infrastructure of the Act, but the Minister will have a little bit more elbow room to disclose concerns about proposed investments early in the decision-making process. Strangely, this does not seem to be accompanied by a provision allowing proponents to amend their applications, but presumably a 'right to respond' to concerns raised by the Minister will be read in to the statutory scheme, on the basis that procedural fairness requires it (see, e.g., para. 17 here).