Fundamental justice
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Fundamental justice is a term in Canadian administrative law that signifies those basic procedural rights that are afforded anyone or anybody facing an adjudicative process or procedure that affects fundamental rights. It is used often in the area of Canadian administrative law with the analysis of a decision being patently unreasonable or otherwise being protected from judicial review. It is analogous to the older concepts of due process, natural justice, and Wednesbury unreasonableness.
The term has usually been used in context of the Canadian bills of rights, namely the Canadian Bill of Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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Canadian Bill of Rights
In written law, the term fundamental justice can be traced back at least to 1960, when the Canadian Bill of Rights was brought into force by the Diefenbaker government. Specifically, section 2(e) of the Canadian Bill of Rights stated that everyone has "the right to a fair hearing in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice for the determination of his rights and obligations." According to the legal scholar Walter Tarnopolsky, the wording of the clause sparked some controversy among those drafting the Bill. Some wanted the words "natural justice" in the place of "fundamental justice," as "natural justice" was indeed a more common phrase with judges and authors. "Fundamental justice" was a more obscure alternative with these figures (other such alternatives include "universal justice"). Still, "fundamental justice" was chosen, and in the case Duke v. The Queen (1972), it was ruled that fundamental justice was, for the purposes of this case, merely equivalent to natural justice. The author, Chief Justice Fauteux, did, however, say that he was not trying "to formulate any final definition."
Unlike the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was added to the constitution of Canada in 1982, the Bill of Rights is not a constitutional instrument but rather an ordinary statute. Still, the Canadian Bill of Rights remains in effect, and its guarantee of the "determination" of one's "rights and obligations" through fundamental justice is not precisely duplicated in the Charter. While the term "fundamental justice" does appear in section 7 of the Charter, this is to limit the rights to life, liberty and security of the person. Hence, in the 1985 Supreme Court of Canada case Singh v. Minister of Employment and Immigration, half of the Court found section 2(e) of the Bill of Rights still has a role to play in Canadian law, and they used it to find in favour of the rights claimants. Justice Jean Beetz, writing for this half of the Court, noted that section 26 of the Charter states that rights outside the Charter are not invalid, and hence the Bill of Rights still has a role to play in Canadian law. Beetz went on to find that in this case, refugees had been denied hearings, and thus their section 2(e) and fundamental justice rights were infringed. (The other half of the Court also found in favour of the claimants, but relied instead on section 7 of the Charter).
Later that same year, in MacBain v. Lederman, the Federal Court of Appeal used section 2(e) of the Bill of Rights, and not the Charter, to invalidate parts of the Human Rights Code on the grounds that they could insert bias into a process to determine "rights and obligations."
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Template:Seealso Since the Canadian Bill of Rights was an ordinary statute, it was not until 1982 when the term fundamental justice was first constitutionalized. The phrase was included in section 7 of the new Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which asserted that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice." To limit the rights to life, liberty and security of the person, the authors of the Charter specifically chose the term "fundamental justice" over "due process" because they believed the term "fundamental justice" would still be interpreted to mean conventional "natural justice." "Due process" was rejected because in the United States, use of that term in the constitution led to judges expanding its meaning (see Lochner era) in ways the Canadian government felt would be undesirable. As constitutional scholar Peter Hogg points out in his book Constitutional Law of Canada, however, the new wording of section 7 removed the context of the "fair hearing" found in the Canadian Bill of Rights, which meant the definition of fundamental justice was now ambiguous and could still be further developed by Canadian courts. This is indeed what happened; since the 1985 Supreme Court decision Re B.C. Motor Vehicle Act, the meaning of the words "fundamental justice" in section 7 has been greatly expanded and encompasses much more than mere procedural rights.
Section 24
The term fundamental justice might have some meaning in Charter case law even outside section 7. In the 2003 Charter case Doucet-Boudreau, some Supreme Court justices wished to narrow the scope of the remedial section 24 by citing fundamental justice. In this case, a lower-court judge, after having found the claimants' section 23 rights were violated, used section 24 to demand that the government, while working to repair the infringement of the right, continue to report to him after his ruling. Some Supreme Court justices felt this was an unconstitutional breach of fundamental justice because the judicial order was not clear enough to the government. However, these justices formed the minority of the panel, and the earlier decision was upheld.
References
- Hogg, Peter W. Constitutional Law of Canada. 2003 Student Ed. (Scarborough, Ontario: Thomson Canada Limited, 2003).
- Tarnopolsky, Walter Surma. The Canadian Bill of Rights. (Toronto: The Carswell Company Limited, 1966).