Reference Re Residential Tenancies Act (Ontario)
Reference Re Residential Tenancies Act (Ontario), [1981] 1 S.C.R. 714 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on the jurisdiction of superior courts provided by section 96 of the Constitution Act, 1867. The Court formulated a three-step test for determining whether an administrative body was encroaching upon the jurisdiction of the superior courts.
| Reference Re Residential Tenancies Act (Ontario) | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Hearing: November 25-26, 1980 Judgment: May 28, 1981 | |
| Full case name | Re Residential Tenancies Act, 1979, [1981] 1 S.C.R. 714 |
| Citations | {{{citations}}} |
| Court membership | |
| Chief Justice: Bora Laskin Puisne Justices: Ronald Martland, Roland Ritchie, Brian Dickson, Jean Beetz, Willard Estey, William McIntyre, Julien Chouinard, Antonio Lamer | |
| Reasons given | |
| Majority | Dickson J. (as he then was) |
Test formulated by Court
Justice Dickson, writing for the majority, suggested the test.
- Firstly, it must be determined "whether the power or jurisdiction conforms to the power or jurisdiction exercised by superior, district or county courts at the time of Confederation."[1]
- Secondly, the test asks "whether the function itself is different when viewed in that setting. In particular, can the function still be considered to be a 'judicial' function."[2]
- Thirdly, the test asks the court to "review the tribunal's function as a whole in order to appraise the impugned function in its entire institutional context."[3]
In this case, it was determined that Ontario's Residential Tenancies Act was not valid provincial legislation.
Subsequent case law
The test was later applied in Massey-Ferguson Industries v. Govt. of Sask., [1981] 2 S.C.R. 413, and eventually modified in Sobeys Stores v. Yeomans, [1989] 1 S.C.R. 238.
gollark: For example:- the average person probably does *some* sort of illegal/shameful/bad/whatever stuff, and if some organization has information on that it can use it against people it wants to discredit (basically, information leads to power, so information asymmetry leads to power asymmetry). This can happen if you decide to be an activist or something much later, even- having lots of data on you means you can be manipulated more easily (see, partly, targeted advertising, except that actually seems to mostly be poorly targeted)- having a government be more effective at detecting minor crimes (which reduced privacy could allow for) might *not* actually be a good thing, as some crimes (drug use, I guess?) are kind of stupid and at least somewhat tolerable because they *can't* be entirely enforced practically
gollark: No, it probably isn't your fault, it must have been dropped from my brain stack while I was writing the rest.
gollark: ... I forgot one of them, hold on while I try and reremember it.
gollark: That's probably one of them. I'm writing.
gollark: > If you oppose compromises to privacy on the grounds that you could do something that is misidentified as a crime, being more transparent does helpI mean, sure. But I worry about lacking privacy for reasons other than "maybe the government will use partial data or something and accidentally think I'm doing crimes".
Notes
- p. 734
- ibid.
- p. 735
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