F. A United Court: Law v Canada

• Author: Robert J. Sharpe - Kent Roach
• Profession: Court of Appeal for Ontario - Faculty of Law, University of Toronto
• Pages: 344-347

Page 344

The Supreme Court of Canada resolved its differences in the 1999 decision in Law v Canada⁴¹by holding that a section 15 violation of the Charter would require proof of discrimination on an enumerated or analogous ground and substantive discrimination that violated human dignity. The case involved a claim of age discrimination by a thirty-year-old widow who would not qualify for Canada Pension Plan survivor benefits until she was sixty-five. She would have received the benefits if she had dependent children or was either disabled or forty-five years of age or older. The Court held that, even though the law imposed a formal and unequal distinction on the basis of the enumerated ground of age, it did not violate section 15 of the Charter because it did not violate the human dignity of those under forty-five and, accordingly, did not amount to substantive discrimination. Although the law treats younger people differently, the differential treatment does not reflect or promote the notion that they are less capable or less deserving of concern, respect, and consideration . . . . Nor does the differential treatment perpetuate the view that people in this class are less capable or less worthy of recognition or value as human beings or as members of Canadian society . . . . [T]he legislation does not stereotype, exclude or devalue adults under 45. The law func-

Page 345

tions not by the device of stereotype, but by distinctions corresponding to the actual situation of individuals it affects.⁴²The Court noted that "adults under the age of 45 have not been consistently and routinely subjected to the sorts of discrimination faced by some of Canada’s discrete and insular minorities."⁴³Moreover, the legislature was entitled to rely on "informed statistical generalizations"⁴⁴

rather than stereotypes that younger people could more easily replace their deceased partner’s income and that they should not receive the survivor’s pension until reaching the age of sixty-five years.

The framework for section 15 claims set out in Law draws on Andrews by stressing the need for a purposive and contextual approach to equality rights, requiring proof of both differential treatment and substantive discrimination on enumerated or analogous grounds. As in Andrews, the Court stressed that equality is a comparative concept and that a comparator group must be selected in order to ground the section 15 analysis. The Court added that "the claimant generally...