Public Law Duties ≠ Private Law Duties of Care

Local governments, like other public bodies and officials, are required by legislation to perform specific public duties and responsibilities. If these “public law duties” are not conducted correctly, this may be grounds for finding that the decision or action was improper, and a court may send the matter back for reconsideration. However, it does not […]

The BC Supreme Court has released reasons in Anderson v Strathcona Regional District, 2021 BCSC 1800 [Anderson] which provides an excellent example of the Court applying the reasonableness standard of review, as recently re-articulated by the Supreme Court of Canada in Vavilov, to decisions of a local government.

In Reasons for Judgement issued January 8, 2021 in Allan v Froese, 2021 BCSC 28 [Allan], the BC Supreme Court upheld the long-standing principle that the acceptance of a campaign contribution from a developer to an elected local government official does not establish that the official has a monetary interest in that developer’s matters before […]

On August 20, 2020, the Supreme Court of Canada granted leave to hear a future appeal in the matter of Marchi v. City of Nelson. This case arose from an incident in Nelson, BC in January 2015. The City was experiencing a heavy snowfall and on the early morning of January 5 sent out City […]

As addressed in a previous post, in December 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada released its decision in Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65 [Vavilov] which introduced a new test for the determination of the applicable standard of review of administrative decisions and revised the framework for conducting reasonableness review.

Twenty years ago, the Supreme Court of Canada declared in the case of Nanaimo (City) v. Rascal Trucking Ltd.1, that the question of whether a local government was acting within the scope of its authority should be determined on the standard of correctness. Subsequently, the Supreme Court of Canada affirmed that such a question “will […]