In Canadian and New Zealand law, fundamental justice is the fairness underlying the administration of justice and its operation. The principles of fundamental justice are specific legal principles that command "significant societal consensus" as "fundamental to the way in which the legal system ought fairly to operate", per R v Malmo-Levine. These principles may stipulate basic procedural rights afforded to anyone facing an adjudicative process or procedure that affects fundamental rights and freedoms, and certain substantive standards related to the rule of law that regulate the actions of the state. The degree of protection dictated by these standards and procedural rights vary in accordance with the precise context, involving a contextual analysis of the affected person's interests. In other words, the more a person's rights or interests are adversely affected, the more procedural or substantive protections must be afforded to that person in order to respect the principles of fundamental justice. A legislative or administrative framework that respects the principles of fundamental justice, as such, must be fundamentally fair to the person affected, but does not necessarily have to strike the "right balance" between individual and societal interests in general.
Andrews v Law Society of British Columbia, [1989] 1 SCR 143 is the first Supreme Court of Canada case to deal with section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In the case, the court outlined a test, sometimes called the "Andrews test", to determine if there has been a prima facie violation of equality rights. This case expanded the application of section 15 of the Charter by adding analogous grounds for discrimination to the extent enumerated grounds.
Section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is a constitutional provision that protects an individual's autonomy and personal legal rights from actions of the government in Canada. There are three types of protection within the section: the right to life, liberty and security of the person. Denials of these rights are constitutional only if the denials do not breach what is referred to as fundamental justice.
In Canadian law, a security certificate is a mechanism by which the Government of Canada can detain and deport foreign nationals and all other non-citizens living in Canada. The federal government may issue a certificate naming a permanent resident or any other non-citizen suspected of violating human rights, of having membership within organized crime, or is perceived to be a threat to national security. Subjects of a certificate are inadmissible to Canada and are subject to a removal order. Where the government has reasonable grounds to believe that the individual named in the certificate is a danger to national security, to the safety of any person or is unlikely to participate in any court proceedings, the individual can be detained. The entire process is subject to a limited form of review by the Federal Court.
The Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA) is an Act of the Parliament of Canada, administered by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) and Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), which replaced the Immigration Act, 1976 in 2002 as the primary federal legislation regulating immigration to Canada.
Adil Charkaoui is a Morocco-born Canadian citizen who was arrested by the Canadian government under a security certificate in May 2003.
Mohamed Harkat is a native-born Algerian and permanent resident of Canada who was arrested in 2002 on suspicion of ties to terrorism and was imprisoned under security certificates. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) alleged that he entered the country as a sleeper agent for al-Qaeda.
Section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, as part of the Constitution of Canada, is a legal rights section that protects an individual's freedom from cruel and unusual punishments in Canada. The section has generated some case law, including the essential case R. v. Smith (1987), in which it was partially defined, and R. v. Latimer (2001), a famous case in which Saskatchewan farmer Robert Latimer protested that his long, mandatory minimum sentence for the murder of his disabled daughter was cruel and unusual.
Suresh v Canada is a leading decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in the areas of constitutional law and administrative law. The Court held that, under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in most circumstances the government cannot deport someone to a country where they risk being tortured, but refugee claimants can be deported to their homelands if they are a serious security risk to Canadians.
Baker v Canada , [1999] 2 SCR 817 is a leading Canadian administrative law decision of the Supreme Court of Canada. The Court provided guidance on the standard of judicial review of administrative decisions. The issue was what standard of procedural fairness should be applied when considering the judicial review of the waiver of the requirement that applications for permanent residence be filed from abroad. The case also clarified the need for written reasons in some administrative decisions.
Charkaoui v Canada , 2007 SCC 9, is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the constitutionality of procedures for determining the reasonableness of a security certificate and for reviewing detention under a certificate. The Court held that the security certificate process, which prohibited the named individual from examining evidence used to issue the certificate, violated the right to liberty and habeas corpus under section 7, 9 and 10 of the Canadian Charter. The Court however rejected the appellant arguments that the extension of detentions violated the right against indefinite detention, that the differential treatment violated equality rights, and that the detention violated the rule of law. As remedy, the Court declared the "judicial confirmation of certificates and review of detention" to be of no force and effect, striking down articles 33 and 77 to 85 of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, but suspended the ruling for one year.
The table below lists the reasons delivered from the bench by the Supreme Court of Canada during 2004. The table illustrates what reasons were filed by each justice in each case, and which justices joined each reason. This list, however, does not include decisions on motions.
Canadian administrative law is the body of law that addresses the actions and operations of governments and governmental agencies in Canada. That is, the law concerns the manner in which courts can review the decisions of administrative decision-makers (ADMs) such as a board, tribunal, commission, agency or Crown minister, when he or she exercises ministerial discretion.
Nicholson v Haldimand-Norfolk Reg Police Commrs, [1979] 1 SCR 311, is a leading decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in Canadian administrative law. The decision was a landmark reform of administrative law, in which the Court significantly increased the degree of court intervention on procedural grounds.
Dunsmuir v New Brunswick2008 SCC 9, [2008] 1 SCR 190 is the leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on the topic of substantive review and standards of review. The decision is notable for combining the reasonableness (simpliciter) and patent unreasonableness standards of review into a single reasonableness standard.
Canada v. Khosa, 2009 SCC 12, is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision in Canadian administrative law.
Canada v GlaxoSmithKline Inc is the first ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada that deals with issues involving transfer pricing and how they are treated under the Income Tax Act of Canada ("ITA").
Zunera Ishaq is a Canadian Sunni Muslim woman living in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada, who was at the centre of a debate about the right to wear a niqāb— a veil that covers most of the face—when taking the Oath of Citizenship at a public citizenship ceremony administered under the Citizenship Act, RSC 1985, c C-29, which became a point of controversy during the 2015 Canadian federal elections.
The idea of ministerial discretion, when employed in Canadian statute law, means the power of a Crown minister to vary or alter the decisions of his bureaucrats, one of his Committees, or one of his Boards. The idea derives from the laws of the United Kingdom, of which Canada, under the rubric of British North America, once was part. The term needs to be written into the statute, as for example in section 51 of the Canadian Oil and Gas Operations Act:
The Governor in Council may at any time, in his discretion, either on petition of any interested person or of his own motion, vary or rescind any decision or order of the Committee made under this Act, whether the order is made between parties or otherwise and any order that the Governor in Council makes with respect thereto becomes a decision or order of the Committee and, subject to section 52, is binding on the Committee and on all parties.
The case of Dimbo v Minister for Justice[2008] IESC 26; [2008] 27 ILT 231; [2008] 5 JIC 0101 was a Supreme Court that held that when deciding to make a deportation order in relation to the parents of an Irish born citizen under s.3 of the Immigration Act 1999, the state must consider facts that are specific to the individual child, his or her age, current educational progress, development and opportunities and his/her attachment to the community.
