Trinity Western University: Policing Gender and Requiring LGBTQI+ People to Pay for It

By: Saul Templeton

PDF Version: Trinity Western University: Policing Gender and Requiring LGBTQI+ People to Pay for It

This post is a follow-up to my previous post, Trinity Western University: Your Tax Dollars at Work. The first two parts respond to issues raised in the comments to that post. The first part explains my position on the “irreducible conflict” between freedom of religion and freedom from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The second part deals with whether a line can, or should, be drawn between TWU and other religious institutions and charities that discriminate. (Answer: all charities that discriminate on a Charter protected ground should have their charitable status revoked where the discrimination meets the charity law test of actions contrary to public policy). The third and last part explores TWU’s history of exploiting Canada’s charitable tax credit regime.

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Bringing Environmental Law Students Together: the CAELS Conference in Calgary

By: Jennifer Cox

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Conference Commented On: Igniting a Spark, Canadian Association of Environmental Law Societies 2015 Conference, Calgary

While many students travelled or relaxed during February’s reading week, I was fortunate enough to be a part of a group of second and first year students from the University of Calgary’s Environmental Law Society (ELS) who put together the 3rd Annual Canadian Association of Environmental Law Societies (CAELS) Conference. The two-day conference was attended by over 100 delegates from all across Canada and covered a wide array of topics with a focus on energy law.

CAELS is a Canada-wide and student-run association which gives Canadian law students a forum to discuss issues in environmental law. The conference, first held in 2013, is now a major part of this forum. ELS members attended the first two years of the CAELS conference, then held in Ottawa. We were impressed by the quality of the speakers and the discussions at the conference, and started talking about what a Calgary-led CAELS conference could look like. We wanted to bring students excited about environmental, natural resource, and energy law to Calgary to gain exposure to the city’s wealth of knowledge in that area. Led by CAELS Coordinator and second year University of Calgary law student Scott Allen, we were able to achieve that goal.

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Where Are We Going on Standard of Review in Alberta?

By: Shaun Fluker

PDF Version: Where Are We Going on Standard of Review in Alberta?

Case Commented On: Edmonton East (Capilano) Shopping Centres Limited v Edmonton (City), 2015 ABCA 85

In Edmonton East (Capilano) Shopping Centres Limited v Edmonton (City) the Court of Appeal has upheld an earlier chambers decision of Associate Chief Justice Rooke to set aside an Edmonton assessment review board decision. This ought to have been a fairly routine administrative law case, however the Court of Appeal chose to engage in the fundamentals of judicial review and purports to add a new exception to the presumption of deference I wrote about early in January 2015 on ABlawg (see Some Thoughts on the Presumption of Deference under the Dunsmuir Framework on Substantive Judicial Review). The Court of Appeal has perhaps also significantly altered the relationship between the superior courts and administrative tribunals in Alberta. I say this because on an initial glance, it is difficult to reconcile the reasoning of the Court of Appeal in this judgment with recent jurisprudence from the Supreme Court of Canada on standard of review generally and the jurisprudence in Alberta which has developed in relation to the Edmonton assessment review board itself. Administrative law scholars and practitioners will no doubt be interested to watch how this unfolds in Alberta.

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Settlement Agreements Can Pose Challenges for Human Rights Commissions

By: Linda McKay-Panos

PDF Version: Settlement Agreements Can Pose Challenges for Human Rights Commissions

Cases Commented On: Buterman v Greater St. Albert Regional School Division No. 29, 2014 AHRC 8; Buterman v Greater St. Albert Regional School Division No. 29, 2015 AHRC 2

It is a well-known principle that one cannot contract out of one’s human rights. For example, one cannot contract or agree to be subjected to sexual harassment in the workplace in the future. This does not, however, prevent parties from entering into settlement agreements after a human rights situation has occurred. Respondents and complainants settling claims under the Alberta Human Rights Act, RSA 2000 c A-25.5 (AHRA) agree that no further human rights complaints will be made about the current circumstances, in exchange for receiving money or other remedy. There is a long line of case law in which these settlement agreements have been upheld by the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal or the courts. The leading case that sets out the requirements for upholding a settlement agreement is Chow v Mobil Oil, 1989 ABQB 1026. The Buterman decisions demonstrate some of the access to justice challenges faced by the Alberta Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the parties when the settlement agreement is at issue.

Jan Buterman is the president of the Trans Equality Society of Alberta (TESA). He wants to encourage all Canadians, including those who are transgender, to understand that transgender Canadians have rights. Buterman is currently working on a campaign to encourage the Senate to withdraw an amendment to a trans*-rights bill that would clarify that “everyone” and “every individual” referenced in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms include transgender people.

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Human Rights and Equality under Attack: The Difficult Challenge Ahead

By: Kathleen Mahoney

PDF Version: Human Rights and Equality under Attack: The Difficult Challenge Ahead

Human rights and equality discourse is under attack in many parts of the world. The assumption that equality is a social ideal has been hijacked, hoodwinked, and misrepresented in even the most advanced human rights jurisdictions. The anti-equality discourse is being led by those with agendas that are not at all commensurate with the promotion and continuance of a human rights culture that has advanced the rights of marginalized people all over the world since the inception of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Errors, distortions and outright lies have tainted the discourse about the purpose and importance of human rights commissions and other implementation tools devised for the realization of human rights and equality (see Pearl Eliadis’s new book, Speaking Out on Human Rights).

What is most startling about the critics of human rights and human rights enforcement is that they are so uninterested in what is really happening. Exacerbating the problem is a biased media. Instead of being neutral reporters and commentators, a substantial portion of the media has become advocate, judge and jury against human rights and human rights machinery (see International Council on Human Rights Policy, Journalism, media and the challenge of human rights reporting (2002)). In Canada for example, the very existence of human rights commissions and some of the protections they offer against discrimination has been seriously debated in the press and in some of the highest political circles, for all the wrong reasons (see e.g. National Post, “A Bit Late for Introspection”).

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