Going by those photos, he is about the most un-Green looking Green politician I have ever seen.
He has fundamentally implausible hair.
Comparing the three photos, he seems to be employing the tactic of de-emphasizing the contrast between lotsa-skin and little-hair by just shaving off the latter entirely, but isn't doing it regularly enough.
(To be fair, that's kinda my default approach to facial hair. I dislike having a beard, but sometimes appear to have one, just because I'm too lazy to shave every day.)
The Legislation. Act, 2006. It replaced the old Interpretation Act. s.12 explicitly deals with what happens when a bill is Reserved to the Governor General.
Who said Reservation and Disallowance is a spent power?
Well it doesn’t actually mention disallowance…. Though arguably it wouldn’t anyway since it is only dealing with Bills that have become effective law.
On a more substantial note, a while back I stumbled across the City of Toronto case in the Supreme Court from 2021 where in the early days of the Ford government the province had gratuitously messed with the city’s electoral districts in the middle of an actual municipal election. The case ultimately went all the way to the SCC and the Court divided 5-4 on whether unwritten principles could be used to invalidate the provincial legislation. The majority said no, which might support SPK’s view that the continued existence of the provision that allows for disallowance should take priority over any unwritten principles (i.e., federalism) that suggests otherwise. Of course it also meant that Ford was within his constitutional powers to make a chaos of our municipal election but c’est la vie.*
I still remember the Flamborough Liberation Front, trying to throw off the yoke if Hamilton.
Were they just kind of a playful assertion of local identity, maybe with an eye toward community self-promotion and possibly tourism bucks?
Edmonton annexed the city of Strathcona some time in the early C20, and the area just east of the university started gentrifying into a hip arts/bar district in the early 80s or so. Shortly thereafter, the neighbourhood boosters started promoting the idea of Old Strathcona as a separate city, with the head of the rep-theatre voted "Lady Mayor" or some such. Not sure how long that lasted for(or if it even still continues), but I don't think it ever really became part of the public consciousness.
A troubling development in this area of Ontario has been Ford's trump-like decision to discontinue the election of regional chairpersons and take on himself the authority to appoint them. I am not at all involved in local politics, but I am well aware that Waterloo Region council is chaired by a responsive, competent and popular woman who is close to the people.
A troubling development in this area of Ontario has been Ford's trump-like decision to discontinue the election of regional chairpersons and take on himself the authority to appoint them. I am not at all involved in local politics, but I am well aware that Waterloo Region council is chaired by a responsive, competent and popular woman who is close to the people.
And we can probably assume Ford is the kinda guy who would scream against a unitary state ruling over Canada from Parliament Hill, but be happy to impose one ruling over Ontario from Queen's Park.
(In fairness, while I recognize and hopefully understand the issues at play in federal vs. local and appointed vs. elected rule, I am not of settled opinion on the matter, and increasingly just cheer for whichever model's avatars in a given controversy are pushing the agenda best reflecting my own overall worldview. See "states' rights to pass pro-scab labour laws vs. states' rights to free the weed" for an example of an American dichotomy along these lines.)
As I said above, Ontario has long regarded its municipalities as its playthings.
I don't doubt it. Though I'd be interested to know how that compares with provincial governments elsewhere in Canada.
Alberta, AFAIK, has not recently had many notable examples of major amalgamation forced upon municipalities against their will. The two major postwar acquisitions by Edmonton were approved by plebiscites in the absorbed regions.
Ralph Klein's amalgamation of health boards in the mid-90s was another story. But his popularity only increased after that.
Much of Ontario's history with provincial autonomy was more about Queen's Patk wanting to be the top dog in people's lives, not Parliament Hill.
Right. I didn't mean that when Queen's Park rides roughshod over lower jurisdictions, it's always as an anti-Ottawa thing, or done in defiance of Ottawa. Just that the premiers who do that would probably object strenuously if the same thing were done to Ontario.
Provinces have their own constitutional rights and responsibilities. Cities only have the rights and responsibilities that are delegated to them by the province.
Provinces have their own constitutional rights and responsibilities. Cities only have the rights and responsibilities that are delegated to them by the province.
Fair enough, but “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” seems to be a foreign concept to Ford’s government.
Provinces have their own constitutional rights and responsibilities. Cities only have the rights and responsibilities that are delegated to them by the province.
Fair enough, but “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” seems to be a foreign concept to Ford’s government.
And one could argue that it's a little awkward for Ford to be exercising such maximalist intervention in municipal affairs, legal though it may be, while at the same time publically denouncing Carney's attempts to put limits on the invocation of Section 33 "overreach".
Okay. But what is the legal principle at work here, which mandates that a bilingual province requires a bilingual head-of-state, but wouldn't mandate the same thing for a bilingual country, should someone choose to make an issue of it?
English and French are the official languages of Canada and have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the Parliament and government of Canada.
16.(2) reads...
English and French are the official languages of New Brunswick and have equality of status and equal rights and privileges as to their use in all institutions of the legislature and government of New Brunswick.
Which variations in wording make the difference there?
You do not find this is in section 1. "Any member of the public in New Brunswick has the
right to communicate with, and to receive available services from, any office
of an institution of the legislature or government of New Brunswick in English
or French." No comparable "right to communicate with" in the section about Canada.
You do not find this is in section 1. "Any member of the public in New Brunswick has the
right to communicate with, and to receive available services from, any office
of an institution of the legislature or government of New Brunswick in English
or French." No comparable "right to communicate with" in the section about Canada.
Okay, thanks. I think we were talking about different parts of the constitution. It's confusing, because "16.(1)" seems to mean "Section 16, subsection 1", whereas 16.1, ie. no parentheses, seems to refer to a whole different section, separate from 16.
Haven’t read the decision yet but it did occur to me the timing might not be coincidental.
If you are someone who is happy that the courts ruled in favour of mandatory bilingualism for the New Brunswick LG job, you would probably want the federal government to decide GG appointments in the same spirit that motivated the authors of 16.2 in the Charter, ie. only bilingual appointees considered.
And opponents of bilingualism, especially in New Brunswick, might wonder why that province has to suffer under the yoke of forced bilingual leadership, while bilingual Canada gets a pass.
Granted, the Liberals appointed Mary Simon, and were apparently the ones arguing at the SCOC that English-only LGs are okay in New Brunswick, so I guess they themselves cannot be accused of hypocrisy. But, yeah, it might've been awkward optics had this decision come down at any point in Simon's term of office.
If Canadian liberals, as a broad category, were the kind of people to contextualize current events within the wider flow of history, I suspect more of them, upon seeing JT justify speaking in French because he's at an event in Quebec; and then appointing a bilingual anglo as GG; and the Liberals defending unilingual LGs as acceptable for the only officially bilingual province in the country, would say to themselves "Old Pierre must be rolling in his grave."
Granted, those three examples, at least, are all low-level culture-war skirmishes(if that), rather than serious conflicts over, say, schools or language-of-service. But still, the Simon appointment, for example, is very much the sorta thing you would heard anglo chauvinists and Reformers defend back in the day with Who cares if she can speak French or not? The whole country can understand goddam English, even the French can speak English! It's just goddam common sense!
And, in fact, some variation of that argument, if delivered with more refined phrasology(*), is pretty much the only rebuttal to be made in response to someone objecting to the Simon appointment as an affront to francophones.
(*) "In terms of any undue hardship allegedly placed upon speakers of French by the Simon appointment, the negative impact would seem to be minimal in the sphere of actual practice, taking into account the bilingual proficiency of most francophones."
If Canadian liberals, as a broad category, were the kind of people to contextualize current events within the flow of history, I suspect more of them, upon seeing JT...appointing a bilingual anglo as GG...would say to themselves "Old Pierre must be rolling in his grave."
To test out my hypothesis of an intergenerational betrayal, I googled whether Ed Schreyer can speak French. According to AI and its extracts from The Canadian Encyclopedia, he is multilingual, including in French.
If you've never done so already, check out Schreyer's coat-of-arms. Six different languages, representing all the ones he speaks. No indigenous tongues, which was presumably a general lacuna JT was trying to remedy by appointing Simon.
While Ms. Simon IS a bilingual English-speaker, my phrasing shoulda reflected that the controversy over her appointment was because she does not speak French.
You do not find this is in section 1. "Any member of the public in New Brunswick has the
right to communicate with, and to receive available services from, any office
of an institution of the legislature or government of New Brunswick in English
or French." No comparable "right to communicate with" in the section about Canada.
Okay, thanks. I think we were talking about different parts of the constitution. It's confusing, because "16.(1)" seems to mean "Section 16, subsection 1", whereas 16.1, ie. no parentheses, seems to refer to a whole different section, separate from 16.
That’s right - subsections are in parentheses and decimal points are used to insert new sections without having to renumber everything. I gather 16.1 was unilaterally added by New Brunswick as a section affecting only NB. I have only scanned the decision (which is probably about as far as I’m going to get) but the majority decision seems to be based primarily on 16(2) which as you say is worded parallel with 16(1) which applies federally. Also generally with the exception of 16.1 (which has no federal equivalent) the whole language rights part of the Charter has similar provisions federally and for New Brunswick. So offhand, I would guess that there’s a good chance that what they say here would also have some application to the office of the Governor General.
As an aside, the are a lot of decimal points in Canadian statutes because the last time the statutes were reconsolidated was in 1985. In 1985 all the statutes (except the Income Tax Act) were renumbered in whole numbers so if you’re looking for a case on a provision in say the Criminal Code it will probably be referred to using a different section number in any case before 1985. Anything new inserted into an existing Act after 1985 had to be inserted with a decimal point.
They didn’t renumber the Income Tax Act - I understand tax lawyers revolted at the thought of having to learn a completely new numbering for that Act’s many, many, sections. So if you ever look at the ITA you will see a tangled mess of decimal points in sections and subsections etc etc.
Comments
He has fundamentally implausible hair.
Comparing the three photos, he seems to be employing the tactic of de-emphasizing the contrast between lotsa-skin and little-hair by just shaving off the latter entirely, but isn't doing it regularly enough.
(To be fair, that's kinda my default approach to facial hair. I dislike having a beard, but sometimes appear to have one, just because I'm too lazy to shave every day.)
https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/06l21
The Legislation. Act, 2006. It replaced the old Interpretation Act. s.12 explicitly deals with what happens when a bill is Reserved to the Governor General.
Who said Reservation and Disallowance is a spent power?
On a more substantial note, a while back I stumbled across the City of Toronto case in the Supreme Court from 2021 where in the early days of the Ford government the province had gratuitously messed with the city’s electoral districts in the middle of an actual municipal election. The case ultimately went all the way to the SCC and the Court divided 5-4 on whether unwritten principles could be used to invalidate the provincial legislation. The majority said no, which might support SPK’s view that the continued existence of the provision that allows for disallowance should take priority over any unwritten principles (i.e., federalism) that suggests otherwise. Of course it also meant that Ford was within his constitutional powers to make a chaos of our municipal election but c’est la vie.*
Text of the decision in case anyone is curious…
https://canlii.ca/t/jjc3d
(*that’s life)
I still remember the Flamborough Liberation Front, trying to throw off the yoke if Hamilton.
Were they just kind of a playful assertion of local identity, maybe with an eye toward community self-promotion and possibly tourism bucks?
Edmonton annexed the city of Strathcona some time in the early C20, and the area just east of the university started gentrifying into a hip arts/bar district in the early 80s or so. Shortly thereafter, the neighbourhood boosters started promoting the idea of Old Strathcona as a separate city, with the head of the rep-theatre voted "Lady Mayor" or some such. Not sure how long that lasted for(or if it even still continues), but I don't think it ever really became part of the public consciousness.
They were serious, they wanted out and felt betrayed by the Harris Conservatives.
So the Hamilton region was amalgamated at the same time as the GTA?
Thanks.
And we can probably assume Ford is the kinda guy who would scream against a unitary state ruling over Canada from Parliament Hill, but be happy to impose one ruling over Ontario from Queen's Park.
(In fairness, while I recognize and hopefully understand the issues at play in federal vs. local and appointed vs. elected rule, I am not of settled opinion on the matter, and increasingly just cheer for whichever model's avatars in a given controversy are pushing the agenda best reflecting my own overall worldview. See "states' rights to pass pro-scab labour laws vs. states' rights to free the weed" for an example of an American dichotomy along these lines.)
Much of Ontario's history with provincial autonomy was more about Queen's Patk wanting to be the top dog in people's lives, not Parliament Hill.
I don't doubt it. Though I'd be interested to know how that compares with provincial governments elsewhere in Canada.
Alberta, AFAIK, has not recently had many notable examples of major amalgamation forced upon municipalities against their will. The two major postwar acquisitions by Edmonton were approved by plebiscites in the absorbed regions.
Ralph Klein's amalgamation of health boards in the mid-90s was another story. But his popularity only increased after that.
Right. I didn't mean that when Queen's Park rides roughshod over lower jurisdictions, it's always as an anti-Ottawa thing, or done in defiance of Ottawa. Just that the premiers who do that would probably object strenuously if the same thing were done to Ontario.
Fair enough, but “just because you can doesn’t mean you should” seems to be a foreign concept to Ford’s government.
And one could argue that it's a little awkward for Ford to be exercising such maximalist intervention in municipal affairs, legal though it may be, while at the same time publically denouncing Carney's attempts to put limits on the invocation of Section 33 "overreach".
Just a few days after Mary Simon left office.
Okay. But what is the legal principle at work here, which mandates that a bilingual province requires a bilingual head-of-state, but wouldn't mandate the same thing for a bilingual country, should someone choose to make an issue of it?
Do you mean the parts that are precisely entitled "16.(1)" aka "Official Languages of Canada" and "16.(2)" aka "Official Languages of New Brunswick"?
16.(2) reads...
Which variations in wording make the difference there?
right to communicate with, and to receive available services from, any office
of an institution of the legislature or government of New Brunswick in English
or French." No comparable "right to communicate with" in the section about Canada.
Okay, thanks. I think we were talking about different parts of the constitution. It's confusing, because "16.(1)" seems to mean "Section 16, subsection 1", whereas 16.1, ie. no parentheses, seems to refer to a whole different section, separate from 16.
If you are someone who is happy that the courts ruled in favour of mandatory bilingualism for the New Brunswick LG job, you would probably want the federal government to decide GG appointments in the same spirit that motivated the authors of 16.2 in the Charter, ie. only bilingual appointees considered.
And opponents of bilingualism, especially in New Brunswick, might wonder why that province has to suffer under the yoke of forced bilingual leadership, while bilingual Canada gets a pass.
Granted, the Liberals appointed Mary Simon, and were apparently the ones arguing at the SCOC that English-only LGs are okay in New Brunswick, so I guess they themselves cannot be accused of hypocrisy. But, yeah, it might've been awkward optics had this decision come down at any point in Simon's term of office.
Granted, those three examples, at least, are all low-level culture-war skirmishes(if that), rather than serious conflicts over, say, schools or language-of-service. But still, the Simon appointment, for example, is very much the sorta thing you would heard anglo chauvinists and Reformers defend back in the day with Who cares if she can speak French or not? The whole country can understand goddam English, even the French can speak English! It's just goddam common sense!
And, in fact, some variation of that argument, if delivered with more refined phrasology(*), is pretty much the only rebuttal to be made in response to someone objecting to the Simon appointment as an affront to francophones.
(*) "In terms of any undue hardship allegedly placed upon speakers of French by the Simon appointment, the negative impact would seem to be minimal in the sphere of actual practice, taking into account the bilingual proficiency of most francophones."
To test out my hypothesis of an intergenerational betrayal, I googled whether Ed Schreyer can speak French. According to AI and its extracts from The Canadian Encyclopedia, he is multilingual, including in French.
If you've never done so already, check out Schreyer's coat-of-arms. Six different languages, representing all the ones he speaks. No indigenous tongues, which was presumably a general lacuna JT was trying to remedy by appointing Simon.
While Ms. Simon IS a bilingual English-speaker, my phrasing shoulda reflected that the controversy over her appointment was because she does not speak French.
That’s right - subsections are in parentheses and decimal points are used to insert new sections without having to renumber everything. I gather 16.1 was unilaterally added by New Brunswick as a section affecting only NB. I have only scanned the decision (which is probably about as far as I’m going to get) but the majority decision seems to be based primarily on 16(2) which as you say is worded parallel with 16(1) which applies federally. Also generally with the exception of 16.1 (which has no federal equivalent) the whole language rights part of the Charter has similar provisions federally and for New Brunswick. So offhand, I would guess that there’s a good chance that what they say here would also have some application to the office of the Governor General.
As an aside, the are a lot of decimal points in Canadian statutes because the last time the statutes were reconsolidated was in 1985. In 1985 all the statutes (except the Income Tax Act) were renumbered in whole numbers so if you’re looking for a case on a provision in say the Criminal Code it will probably be referred to using a different section number in any case before 1985. Anything new inserted into an existing Act after 1985 had to be inserted with a decimal point.
They didn’t renumber the Income Tax Act - I understand tax lawyers revolted at the thought of having to learn a completely new numbering for that Act’s many, many, sections. So if you ever look at the ITA you will see a tangled mess of decimal points in sections and subsections etc etc.