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Last week, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal for Ontario laid waste to Superior Court Justice Paul Schabas’s 2025 ruling granting an injunction against the Ontario government ripping out bike lanes in Toronto.
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Removing the lanes “imposes a high and grossly disproportionate cost on section 7 rights holders,” Schabas wrote, referring to the section of the Charter guaranteeing the right to “life, liberty and security of the person.”
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Money quote from the appeal court ruling, written by Justice Grant Huscroft: “(Courts) learn a great deal about a matter in the course of judicial review proceedings, and judges may be tempted to comment on matters of policy. … But the temptation must be resisted. It is not just that courts have no expertise in policy making. … It is illegitimate for courts to involve themselves in matters of legislative policy.”
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Many conservatives and other critics of judicial overreach punched the air, and understandably so.
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More good news: the week before, someone finally went to court to file a challenge against Quebec’s obviously illegal “law” amending the Canadian Constitution to excuse members of the National Assembly from swearing allegiance to Canada — which is to say to the Crown, which is to say to our head of state, the current Queen or King of Canada, which is to say Canada. Provinces can’t legally do that, even when they’re Quebec. Quebec did it, and a lot of other stuff, anyway.
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The appellant is Lawrence David, a Quebecer, University of Ottawa law professor, founder of the Public Interest Litigation Institute and, from what I’ve read of him, an interesting fellow.
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“This legal action is not about monarchy or republicanism,” David told Canadian Lawyer. “It’s simply about if they want to abolish the oath, follow the rules for constitutional amendment. … Any amendments that affect the office of the King or (Quebec’s) lieutenant governor can only be done unanimously by Parliament and the 10 legislatures.”
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The Canadian government just shrugged and added Quebec’s oath amendment to the Constitution (the online version, anyway). It’s outrageous. They didn’t have to do that. I suspect even the National Assembly, which of course voted unanimously against mandatory oathing, was surprised. (That simpering capitulation reminded me a bit of the financially desperate preacher Eli beseeching Daniel at the end of Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood: “I am a false prophet! God is a superstition!”)
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In light of this, why shouldn’t Alberta or Saskatchewan or British Columbia unilaterally amend the Constitution to fit their own needs? Well, OK, Ottawa wouldn’t let them, because they’re not Quebec. So hello, national unity crisis.
