Premier John Robarts asked McRuer to head the commission.[1] Robarts made his request after his government had introduced, and then quickly retracted, a bill dubbed the "police state bill" that would have allowed the Ontario Police Commission (now the Ontario Civilian Police Commission) to "force anyone to give evidence in secret or be jailed indefinitely if they refused".[2] This proposal was deeply unpopular. Arthur Wishart, the province's new attorney-general after Frederick Cass (who had introduced the bill) was removed from the justice portfolio, recommended that the government appoint a royal commission on civil rights in response to the outcry.[3]
McRuer was appointed as commissioner on May 21, 1964,[4] effective retroactively to May 1.[5] The commission's terms of reference instructed him to examine any Ontario law that might affect individual rights or freedoms and to recommend changes to the law to strengthen its protections for civil rights.[5]
The commission made its report between 1968 and 1971.[6] It heard evidence from hundreds of witnesses and its report extended to over 2,200pages.[7] Its report was published in five volumes and three parts.[8]
According to legal scholar David J. Mullan, the commission was "undoubtedly one of the watersheds in the evolution of Ontario administrative law and, indeed, the administrative law of Canada".[8] It recommended that judicial review of administrative action in Ontario be available in more circumstances and that executive power under statute be curtailed.[9][10] In particular, the McRuer report recommended that official discretion be limited by statute and that statutes enumerate the factors officials must consider in exercising their discretion.[11] With respect to delegated legislation, McRuer recommended that the provincial cabinet or a minister be able to disallow any regulation made by a subordinate official.[12]
↑ Hyson, Stewart (2009). "Ombudsman Research Project: The Provincial and Territorial OmbudsOffices in Canada". In Hyson, Stewart (ed.). Provincial and Territorial Ombudsman Offices in Canada. University of Toronto Press. p.21. ISBN978-1-4426-8590-1. OCLC861793278.
John Parmenter Robarts was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 17th premier of Ontario from 1961 to 1971. He was a member of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario.
Barbara Hall is a Canadian lawyer, public servant and former politician. She was the 61st mayor of Toronto, the last to run before amalgamation. She was elected mayor of the pre-amalgamation City of Toronto in 1994, and held office until December 31, 1997. On November 28, 2005, Hall was appointed chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. After having her term extended four times, she retired February 27, 2015, after almost a decade in the position.
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Robert Stanley Kemp Welch, was a Canadian politician. He served in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1963 to 1985 as a member of the Progressive Conservative Party, and was a cabinet minister in the governments of John Robarts, Bill Davis and Frank Miller.
The court system of Canada forms the judicial branch of government, formally known as "The Queen on the Bench", which interprets the law and is made up of many courts differing in levels of legal superiority and separated by jurisdiction. Some of the courts are federal in nature, while others are provincial or territorial.
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Frederick McIntosh Cass Q.C. was a Canadian politician who served as both Attorney-General of Ontario and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly. He served as a Progressive Conservative Member of Provincial Parliament from 1955 until his retirement in 1971. Cass served in the Canadian Armed Forces from 1941 to 1945.
Canadian constitutional law is the area of Canadian law relating to the interpretation and application of the Constitution of Canada by the courts. All laws of Canada, both provincial and federal, must conform to the Constitution and any laws inconsistent with the Constitution have no force or effect.
Arthur Allison Wishart, was a politician and in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1963 to 1971. He was a Progressive Conservative member who served in the cabinets of John Robarts and Bill Davis.
James Chalmers McRuer, was a Canadian lawyer, judge, commissioner and author in Ontario.
André Marin is a lawyer who served as Ontario ombudsman from 2005 to 2015.
Brian Slattery, B.A., BCL, D.Phil., F.R.S.C., is a Professor Emeritus of Law at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He is a prominent academic in Canadian Constitutional Law and Aboriginal rights discourse. He practices Aboriginal law at Slattery & Slattery.
Sidney Bryan Linden is a former Chief Judge of the Ontario Court of Justice and a judicial reformer and administrator in the province of Ontario, Canada.
Grant Huscroft is a Canadian jurist and legal scholar, who currently serves as a justice of the Court of Appeal for Ontario.
Accounts of the Indigenous law governing dispute resolution in the area now called Ontario, Canada, date from the early to mid-17th century. French civil law courts were created in Canada, the colony of New France, in the 17th century, and common law courts were first established in 1764. The territory was then known as the province of Quebec.
Disallowance and reservation are historical constitutional powers in Canada that act as a mechanism to delay or overrule legislation passed by Parliament or a provincial Legislature. In contemporary Canadian history, disallowance is an authority granted to the governor general in council to invalidate an enactment passed by a provincial legislature. Reservation is an authority granted to the governor general or lieutenant governor to withhold royal assent from a bill which has been passed by the respective legislature. In Canadian constitutional law, the powers of reservation and disallowance of federal legislation still formally remain in place in Sections 55 and 56 of the Constitution Act, 1867, and are extended to provincial legislation by Section 90. The initial intent of disallowance, and its practice for the first few years of Confederation, disallowance was considered a means of ensuring constitutional compliance.
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