Kerry Sun

This prolific offender, who was released on bail two weeks ago by a judge who said the phrase "catch and release" was "inflammatory rhetoric," was re-arrested yesterday on charges including break-and-enter and extortion. cbc.ca/news/canada/ne…

Bill 21 decision has to be out by November 30 (and thus done a while ahead to allow for translation, headnoting, etc) if to keep all 7 judges (6 months after Martin retirement) Quebec election to be on or before October 5

NP View: Justice by skin colour nationalpost.com/opinion/np-vie…

Some ruminations on the choice of constitutional interpretive methodology.

“In a parliamentary democracy, this judgment is legitimately vested in our elected representatives. It does not lie in the judiciary whose role is to apply settled law and legal principle — not to pick winners and losers in the distribution of benefits. In losing sight of this, the Supreme Court does a disservice both to our welfare system and to the responsible exercise of judicial power,” writes @SunKerry, member of MLI’s Judicial Foundations Project. Read here⬇️

This case touches on everything @MLInstitute's Judicial Foundations Project is concerned with. A philosophy of judicial interpretation so loose that courts can transform a dispute about what citizenship entails into one about sex discrimination. The reasoning stretches the concept well beyond its ordinary meaning to achieve a preferred outcome. A striking lack of deference to the clear intent of parliament to restrict benefits to citizens. How are we to understand the concept of citizenship if its benefits apply to non-citizens? And one of the most problematic sections of the Charter is at issue, where the courts have developed the concepts of 'substantive equality' and 'adverse effects' to great effect. Concepts so broad in scope such that any policy with differential impacts on a group - essentially every single law and policy on the books - can be framed as a Charter violation. @SunKerry with a fantastic piece outlining the issues in play.

An excellent point by @SunKerry: The SCC's daycare/asylum decision calls into question *any* benefit scheme in the country. If higher (unsubsidized) tuition is found to disproportionately burden nonwhite female international students, for example, that could be a Charter breach.

My latest in @nationalpost on the troubling implications of the Supreme Court of Canada's judgment in Quebec (Attorney General) v. Kanyinda, 2026 SCC 7, and the majority's conclusion that s. 15(1) of the Charter requires Quebec to extend daycare subsidies to 'refugee claimants'.

'Now, more and more Canadians ... are losing confidence in the courts because they see them as “twist[ing] themselves into pretzels to reach the decision they wan[t], entirely contrary to their own precedents”.'

“Making matters worse, the Supreme Court is currently in the midst of deciding whether to limit the ability of elected governments to invoke the notwithstanding clause, which is the last democratic tool we have to push back against absurd court rulings.”

In turn, Côté J. explains, if the SCC's apparent reasoning is logically extended, the 'de facto existence or formal recognition of immigration status as an analogous ground would thus call into question the very foundations of the federal statutory scheme for immigration' [389].

Finally, Côté J. warns of the ramifications of Wagner C.J.'s and the majority's (implicit) approach for immigration law in Canada: it 'would throw open the door to the recognition of most other immigration statuses on the same footing' as protected grounds under s. 15 [385].

SCC declares (Karakatsanis J. for majority; Wagner C.J., Rowe J. concurring; Côté J. dissenting) that Charter s. 15(1) operates to extend daycare benefits to refugee claimants who have yet to obtain refugee status, issuing a remedy to 'read in' those benefits into the Quebec law.