Summaries Sunday: Supreme Advocacy

• Author: Administrator
• Date: June 24, 2018

One Sunday each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, to which you may subscribe. It’s a summary of all appeals as well as leaves to appeal granted so you will know what the SCC will soon be dealing with (May 12 – June 21, 2018 inclusive).

Appeals

Administrative/Aboriginal Law: Discrimination; Standard of Review
Canada (Canadian Human Rights Commission) v. Canada (Attorney General), 2018 SCC 31 (37208)

Well-established presumption, where an administrative body interprets its home statute, reasonableness standard applies. Presumption may be rebutted and the correctness standard applied where: issues re constitutional division of powers; true questions of vires; competing jurisdiction between tribunals; questions of central importance to the legal system and outside the expertise of the decision maker. Exceptionally, the presumption may also be rebutted where a contextual inquiry shows a clear legislative intent that the correctness standard be applied. In applying the standard of review analysis, there is no principled difference between a human rights tribunal and any other decision maker interpreting its home statute, and human rights tribunals are equally entitled to deference where they apply their home statute. As the presumption of reasonableness is not rebutted, the Tribunal’s decisions here reviewed on a reasonableness standard. Here the Tribunal reviewed all of the complaints in carefully considered, thorough and logical decisions that fell within the range of possible, acceptable outcomes; both decisions were reasonable and upheld.

Criminal Law: Withdrawal of Guilty Pleas; Collateral/Immigration Consequences
R. v. Wong, 2018 SCC 25 (37367)

Whether a guilty plea can be withdrawn where the accused is unaware of a collateral consequence: establish subjective prejudice (that they were unaware of legally relevant consequences at the time of the plea); to assess the veracity of that claim, courts can look to objective, contemporaneous evidence. The inquiry is therefore subjective to the accused, but allows for an objective assessment of the credibility of the accused’s subjective claim.

Charter/Professions: Freedom of Religion; Standard of Review
Law Society of British Columbia v. Trinity Western University, 2018 SCC 32 (37318)
Trinity Western University v. Law Society of Upper Canada, 2018 SCC 33...