Christopher Martin Rupar

The Attorney General of Canada appealed from the Alberta Court of Appeal's ruling that the federal Impact Assessment Act and Physical Activities Regulations were entirely ultra vires Parliament.

The Supreme Court allowed the appeal in part, holding that the designated projects scheme is unconstitutional because it is not in pith and substance directed at regulating effects within federal jurisdiction — those effects do not drive the scheme's decision-making functions — and because the defined term 'effects within federal jurisdiction' does not align with federal legislative jurisdiction.

However, the secondary scheme in ss. 81 to 91 of the IAA, which governs projects on federal lands or outside Canada, was found to be clearly intra vires and severable.

The dissent would have upheld the entire legislation as validly directed at assessing and regulating adverse federal effects.

The appellant First Nation's reserve land was flooded in the 1920s–1930s to power hydroelectricity generation without its consent, without compensation, and without lawful authorization.

The trial judge found Canada breached its fiduciary duty and awarded $30,000,000 in equitable compensation, valuing the flooded land based on general expropriation principles and excluding the land's value to the hydroelectricity project.

The majority of the Supreme Court held that the trial judge erred by treating compliance with minimum expropriation obligations as sufficient to discharge the fiduciary duty, which required Canada to negotiate compensation reflecting the full value of the land to the project.

The appeal was allowed and the equitable compensation award returned to the Federal Court for reassessment to include the value of the flooded land for hydroelectricity generation.

Côté J. dissented, finding no reviewable error in the trial judge's compensation assessment and no evidentiary basis for the majority's approach.

Three retired female members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police commenced a constitutional application challenging pension provisions that prevented job-sharing members from purchasing full-time pension credits for their service, a benefit available to members on unpaid leave.

The majority of the Court held that the pension plan's treatment of job-sharers created a distinction based on the enumerated ground of sex, as the program was disproportionately composed of women with childcare responsibilities.

The Court found that this arrangement perpetuated a long-standing source of economic disadvantage to women — gender biases embedded in pension plans historically designed for full-time male employees — thereby establishing a prima facie breach of s. 15(1) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The Attorney General failed to demonstrate a pressing and substantial objective capable of justifying the limitation under s. 1 of the Charter.

The Court granted a declaration that the inability of full-time RCMP members who temporarily reduced working hours under a job-sharing agreement to purchase full-time pension credit for that service violated their s. 15(1) equality rights.

The appeal was allowed with costs throughout, with three justices dissenting on the application of the equality framework and the sufficiency of causal nexus.

This appeal concerned whether records generated under the Independent Assessment Process in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement were subject to federal access, privacy, and archiving legislation, and whether they could be ordered destroyed.

The Court held the supervising judge had authority under the settlement framework to direct disposition of the records and found no palpable and overriding error in concluding the agreement contemplated confidentiality, limited retention, claimant choice, and eventual destruction.

The Court also upheld the modified order requiring a 15-year retention period with a notice program so claimants could elect archival preservation.

The appeal was dismissed with costs to the Independent Counsel.

In a constitutional challenge to federal tax requirement powers, legal professional secrecy was weighed against the state’s audit and collection objectives.

The court held that compelling production from legal advisers without adequate notice to clients, without judicially supervised safeguards, and with an overbroad accounting-records exception produced unreasonable seizures under s. 8.

The impugned provisions failed minimal impairment and were not justified under s. 1.

The provisions were read down to exclude notaries and lawyers acting as legal advisers, and the accounting-records exception was declared invalid.

The appellant sought to compel disclosure of a lawyer’s accounts receivable records under statutory audit and enforcement powers in federal tax legislation.

The court held that Parliament had clearly intended the statutory definition to exclude a lawyer’s accounting records from solicitor-client privilege as a matter of interpretation.

However, in light of the companion constitutional ruling, the disclosure scheme as applied to legal professionals was invalid, and the request for disclosure could not proceed.

The appeal was allowed only to vary the lower disposition, and the compliance application was dismissed.

On a constitutional appeal, the appellants sought declarations that Métis and non-status Indians fall within Parliament’s jurisdiction under s. 91(24), that the federal Crown owes them a fiduciary duty, and that they have consultation and negotiation rights.

The Court held that Métis and non-status Indians are “Indians” under s. 91(24), restored the broader trial declaration, and rejected restricting Métis status to the Powley framework for this jurisdictional purpose.

The Court found this declaration had practical utility in ending the federal-provincial jurisdictional impasse.

The Court declined the second and third declarations as restatements of settled law lacking practical utility.

The Court held that core search-and-seizure and record-keeping provisions in the anti-money laundering and anti-terrorist financing scheme, as applied to lawyers and law firms, unjustifiably infringed Charter protections.

It confirmed sections 62, 63, 63.1 and 64 of the Act violated section 8 in this context, and that related regulatory obligations infringed section 7 when combined with inadequate privilege safeguards.

The appeal was allowed in part: findings against sections 5(i) and 5(j) were set aside, while the remaining constitutional relief largely stood.

The Court allowed the appeal from the Federal Court of Appeal and set aside the divestiture order under s. 92 of the Competition Act.

A majority held the merger likely prevented competition substantially, but concluded the efficiencies defence in s. 96 succeeded because proven efficiency gains outweighed proven anti-competitive effects after the Commissioner failed to quantify quantifiable effects.

This administrative law appeal concerned judicial review of a staffing tribunal decision rejecting an abuse-of-authority complaint under federal public service staffing legislation.

The Court held that the tribunal reasonably concluded there was no legal requirement to use a particular appointment process based on whether a position was new or reclassified.

It further held the reviewing court improperly assessed a different theory than the one advanced in the complaint and impermissibly reweighed the record on judicial review.

The appeal was allowed, with the tribunal decision restored.