Regulator Searches of Workplace Devices
The CCF is intervening in a Supreme Court of Canada case to defend Canadians’ privacy rights when personal information is stored on employees’ workplace devices and systems.
In 2012, a privately owned Quebec company was issued a fine of $30,834 under the province’s Building Act for carrying out construction work as a contractor without holding the requisite licence for that purpose. The corporation responded by challenging the constitutionality of the fine in court, arguing that it violated the corporation’s right to be protected against “any cruel and…
How the Supreme Court of Canada addresses this issue is important for all Canadians in at least two ways. First, and most obviously, the Court will decide whether corporations, and their human stakeholders, are protected by the Charter when facing fines or other punishments and treatments that are grossly disproportionate or outrageously excessive. But second, and perhaps more significantly, in this case, the SCC will set the methodology to be used by future courts in addressing similar disputes from across the nation.
This is not to say corporate rights operate in the same way as the rights of natural persons. In many cases, the law correctly treats the rights of natural persons and artificial persons differently. And a finding that Section 12 does protect legal persons results from the specific text of that Charter provision, then, and would not invite a broader extension of constitutional protections to legal persons.
That said, corporations are structures composed of human stakeholders whose livelihood and liberty are tied up with the ultimate fate of the entity. Imagine a small business is convicted of some form of criminal negligence and a completely disproportionate fine is applied that is tantamount to court-sanctioned bankruptcy. That would obviously have bad effects on individual Canadians. There is no reason in law or policy that these kinds of unfair fines cannot constitute “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Related Cases
Firearms “Variants” Prohibition
The CCF is intervening at the Supreme Court of Canada in a challenge to federal firearms regulations that prohibit a broad range of firearms and their “variants.” The case arose after the Trudeau government in 2020 issued a regulation prohibiting a long list of what they called “military-style assault weapons” and their “variants.” The RCMP…
Rebuilding Ontario Place Act (Ontario Place Protectors v Ontario)
The CCF is intervening at the Supreme Court of Canada in a constitutional challenge to Ontario’s Rebuilding Ontario Place Act (ROPA), legislation tied to the provincial government’s redevelopment of Ontario Place, a defunct waterfront amusement park. ROPA, passed in 2023, exempts the redevelopment from most requirements under the Environmental Assessment Act and the Ontario Heritage…