J. Gordon Petrie

The appellant, a non-unionized public employee holding office 'at pleasure', was dismissed without cause and given four months' pay in lieu of notice.

He grieved the dismissal, and an adjudicator ordered his reinstatement, finding a breach of procedural fairness and interpreting the governing legislation as requiring cause for dismissal.

The Supreme Court of Canada dismissed the appeal, holding that the adjudicator's statutory interpretation was unreasonable and that public employees governed by a contract of employment are not owed a public law duty of procedural fairness upon dismissal.

In doing so, the Court fundamentally restructured the framework for judicial review of administrative decisions, collapsing the three previous standards of review into two: correctness and reasonableness.

The New Brunswick legislature enacted Bill 7, which abolished the system of supernumerary judges and replaced it with a panel of retired judges paid on a per diem basis.

The respondents, who were supernumerary judges, challenged the constitutionality of the legislation, arguing it violated the guarantees of judicial independence under s. 11(d) of the Charter and the Preamble to the Constitution Act, 1867.

The Supreme Court of Canada held that the legislation was unconstitutional because it violated the institutional dimension of financial security by eliminating an economic benefit without referring the matter to an independent, effective, and objective commission.

The Court suspended the declaration of invalidity for six months but allowed the respondents to benefit from it immediately.

The respondents' claim for damages was dismissed as there was no evidence of bad faith by the government.