Carol Crosson

The applicant brought applications for judicial review challenging the City of Guelph's decisions to remove three anti-abortion advertisements from its public buses.

The City had relied on rulings by Ad Standards, which found the advertisements to be misleading and demeaning to women.

The Divisional Court held that the City's decisions were unreasonable because it failed to conduct the balancing exercise required by the Doré/Loyola framework, which requires weighing the City's legislative objectives against the applicant's section 2(b) Charter right to freedom of expression.

The matter was remitted back to the City for reconsideration.

The applicants, members of a pro-life student group, sought judicial review of the Ryerson Students’ Union’s decision to deny their group "Student Group status." The RSU denied status based on its pro-choice, pro-feminist policies.

The court addressed whether it had jurisdiction to review the RSU's decision and whether the decision attracted Charter scrutiny.

The court found the RSU to be a private entity, not subject to administrative law principles or Charter scrutiny in this context, and dismissed the application.

The applicant sought a declaration that the respondent municipality's refusal to post its anti-abortion advertisement on city buses violated its freedom of expression under s. 2(b) of the Charter.

The respondent consented to post the advertisement and did not appear at the hearing.

The Divisional Court found that the Charter applied and the refusal limited the applicant's freedom of expression without a reasonable balancing of statutory objectives.

However, the court declined to issue a formal constitutional declaration due to the lack of an adversarial evidentiary record, instead issuing a consent order requiring the respondent to post the advertisement.