Standard of Review: Plus Ça Change?

In my recently published article, "The Unfortunate Triumph of Form over Substance in Canadian Administrative Law", I argued that Dunsmuir did not make administrative law any simpler.

It is always gratifying to be proved right, so it is with (gloating!) pleasure that I note the decision in Manitoba v. Russell Inns Ltd. et al., 2013 MBCA 46. As Beard J.A. noted, determining the appropriate standard of review is no easy task. Assigning a decision to one of the post-Dunsmuir categories is not self-evident. As she put it:

38               There is a significant amount of academic commentary accumulating that questions whether this revised procedure has simplified the determination of standards of review or merely substituted one complex system for another.