The Unfortunate Triumph of Form over Substance in Canadian Administrative Law

The standard of review analysis for judicial review of administrative action developed by the Supreme Court of Canada before Dunsmuir v New Brunswick had two important features. First, it provided a bulwark against interventionist judges, thereby protecting the autonomy of administrative decision makers and promoting deference. Second, it was substantive, rather than formal, and moved the focus of judicial review away from abstract concepts and towards the eccentricities of statutory schemes. However, in its more recent forays into the general principles of judicial review, the Court has threatened to reverse its deferential and substantive course by following a formalistic, categorical approach. In this article I describe the Court’s efforts to reshape the law of judicial review of administrative action, critique these efforts as favouring a formalistic approach to judicial review, and suggest that in its haste to simplify the law of judicial review, the Court has jeopardized the due deference that should be accorded to administrative decision makers: It has erroneously favoured form over substance

Vavilov and the Culture of Justification in Contemporary Administrative Law

In Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, the Supreme Court of Canada attempted to bring clarity and coherence to Canadian administrative law, an area of legal doctrine long characterized by uncertainty and confusion. The focus in Vavilov was on substantive review, where the “merits” of an administrative decision are challenged in judicial review proceedings. Most judicial review cases in Canada involve substantive review of matters ranging from the grant or refusal of passports to national telecommunications policy and turn on whether a decision was, in whole or in part, incorrect or unreasonable. Challenges to the procedural fairness of a decision-making process, or the general structure of an administrative agency, are comparatively rarer. Unfortunately, substantive review — the task Canadian courts are most often asked to undertake — is the area which has been wracked by uncertainty and confusion

Efficacy of nisin A and nisin V semi-purified preparations alone and in combination with plant essential oils to control Listeria monocytogenes

peer-reviewedThe foodborne pathogenic bacterium Listeria is known for relatively low morbidity and high mortality rates reaching up to 25-30%. Listeria is a hardy organism and its control in foods represents a significant challenge. Many naturally occurring compounds, including the bacteriocin nisin and a number of plant essential oils, have been widely studied and are reported to be effective as antimicrobial agents against spoilage and pathogenic microorganisms. The aim of this study was to investigate the ability of semi-purified preparations (spp) containing either nisin A or an enhanced bioengineered derivative nisin V, alone and in combination with low concentrations of the essential oils thymol, carvacrol and trans-cinnamaldehyde, to control L. monocytogenes in both laboratory media and model food systems. Combinations of nisin V-containing spp (25 μg/ml) with thymol (0.02%), carvacrol (0.02%) or cinnamaldehyde (0.02%) produced a significantly longer lag phase than any of the essential oil/nisin A combinations. In addition, the log reduction in cell counts achieved by the nisin V + carvacrol or nisin V + cinnamaldehyde combinations was twice that of the equivalent nisin A + essential oil treatment. Significantly, this enhanced activity was validated in model food systems against L. monocytogenes strains of food origin. We conclude that the fermentate form of nisin V in combination with carvacrol and cinnamaldehyde offers significant advantages as a novel, natural and effective means to enhance food safety by inhibiting foodborne pathogens such as L. monocytogenes.This work was supported by the Irish Government under the National Development Plan, through Science Foundation Ireland Investigator awards to C.H. and R.P.R. (10/IN.1/B3027), and C.H., R.P.R. and P.D.C. (06/IN.1/B98)

Green building scheme review adds yet more policy uncertainty

Australia\u27s policies to cut greenhouse emissions have been shrouded in uncertainty over the past few months. The contentious Renewable Energy Target review and the swapping of the carbon price for Direct Action have garnered most of the headlines. But another policy, which has quietly been cutting emissions for the past four years, is now also under scrutiny

Atypical Listeria innocua strains possess an intact LIPI-3

peer-reviewedBackground: Listeria monocytogenes is a food-borne pathogen which is the causative agent of listeriosis and can be divided into three evolutionary lineages I, II and III. While all strains possess the well established virulence factors associated with the Listeria pathogenicity island I (LIPI-1), lineage I strains also possess an additional pathogenicity island designated LIPI-3 which encodes listeriolysin S (LLS), a post-translationally modified cytolytic peptide. Up until now, this pathogenicity island has been identified exclusively in a subset of lineage I isolates of the pathogen Listeria monocytogenes. Results: In total 64 L. innocua strains were screened for the presence of LIPI-3. Here we report the identification of an intact LIPI-3 in 11 isolates of L. innocua and the remnants of the cluster in several others. Significantly, we can reveal that placing the L. innocua lls genes under the control of a constitutive promoter results in a haemolytic phenotype, confirming that the cluster is capable of encoding a functional haemolysin. Conclusions: Although the presence of the LIPI-3 gene cluster is confined to lineage I isolates of L. monocytogenes, a corresponding gene cluster or its remnants have been identified in many L. innocua strains.This work was funded by the Enterprise Ireland Commercialisation fund, a programme which is co-financed by the EU through the ERDF. This work was also supported by the Irish Government under the National Development Plan, through Science Foundation Ireland Investigator awards; (06/IN.1/B98) and (10/IN.1/B3027)

Furthering Substantive Equality Through Administrative Law: Charter Values in Education

Recent decisions in the realm of Canadian public law have opened the door to Charter values. Administrative decision-makers must have regard to these values when making decisions. Through the use of a fictional example, this paper is intended provide a guide for laypersons, lawyers, judges, administrators, arbitrators and academics on how to further substantive equality through administrative law. The authors’ focus is on education law, but the proposed framework is capable of application across a wide range of areas. Those in other jurisdictions can replace Charter values with “constitutional values” and adopt a similar analysis. The obligation to educate children about a “diversity of opinions and cultures” is at the heart of the authors’ exploration of administrative decision-making in the education system. They argue, however, that the obligation to pay attention to Charter values provides the lifeblood of substantive equality in the administrative law context. The concept of applying Charter values as a juridical tool in decision-making, while not new, has been given a more dominant role in administrative decision-making by the Supreme Court of Canada in its 2012 Doré decision. While the exact meanings and practical applications of this concept are as yet unclear, this paper makes a small step towards imagining the contours of Charter values. In particular the authors attempt to establish, as a first principle, the role of substantive equality as Charter values begin to solidify and take shape in the jurisprudence. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part presents a fictional administrative law decision-making scenario located within the public school system. This scenario provides a concrete backdrop against which to imagine the function of substantive equality within Charter values. It also discusses the public school system in Canada as a key site for the application of Charter values, and the authors lay out the empirical evidence showing that GLBTQ students and the children of GLBTQ parents suffer an equality deficit in Canadian public schools, a deficit which, in the authors’ view, can be addressed through the proper application of Charter values by decision-makers within the education system. The second part develops an administrative law framework for furthering substantive equality. Specifically, it situates substantive equality within the existing framework of administrative law, and provides a blueprint for what substantive claims might look like under the authors’ proposed framework. The third part treats the precise role of substantive equality, outlining a methodology for blending existing equality jurisprudence with the Court’s decision in Doré, using the fictional scenario as a backdrop. The authors conclude with a demonstration of their proposed framework in the context of their fictional example

Back of Every Cloud There\u27s Sunshine : Throw Your Troubles Away

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/mmb-vp/5574/thumbnail.jp

Partial identification for discrete data with nonignorable missing outcomes

Nonignorable missing outcomes are common in real world datasets and often require strong parametric assumptions to achieve identification. These assumptions can be implausible or untestable, and so we may forgo them in favour of partially identified models that narrow the set of a priori possible values to an identification region. Here we propose a new nonparametric Bayes method that allows for the incorporation of multiple clinically relevant restrictions of the parameter space simultaneously. We focus on two common restrictions, instrumental variables and the direction of missing data bias, and investigate how these restrictions narrow the identification region for parameters of interest. Additionally, we propose a rejection sampling algorithm that allows us to quantify the evidence for these assumptions in the data. We compare our method to a standard Heckman selection model in both simulation studies and in an applied problem examining the effectiveness of cash-transfers for people experiencing homelessness.Comment: 43 pages, 4 figures, 4 table