Opening the Doré to Proportionality: Discretionary Administrative Decisions and the Charter

In Doré v. Barreau du Québec, 2012 SCC 12, the Supreme Court of Canada revisited the debate over how courts should review administrative discretionary decisions implicating Charter rights. In short, the Court held that such decisions should be reviewed using a values-based, administrative law approach focused on proportionality, one that asks whether the decision-maker has properly balanced the relevant Charter values and statutory objectives at issue. This thesis will explore several problematic aspects of Dore's reasoning and implications, and dispute the Court's claim that there is conceptual harmony between the traditional Oakes analysis and its new approach to reviewing the constitutionality of administrative discretionary decisions. In doing so, this thesis will illustrate how the Doré framework subverts the guarantee that the Charter's rights and freedoms are subject only to "such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified."

Department dc:contributor.department

Law

Year dc:date.issued

2015

Author dc:creator

• Guy, Trevor Richard

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Dyzenhaus, David

• administrative
• constitutional
• dore
• oakes
• review
• standard

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/69099

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/69099