legal remainder

legal remainder

(Return tabled) Question No. 334 Hon. Irwin Cotler: With regard to bijuralism and harmonization: (a) what measures are in place to ensure legislative bijuralism across all departments; (b) since the adoption of the “Policy on Legislative Bijuralism”, how has the Department of Justice (i) ensured that all legal counsel in the Department are made aware of the requirements of legislative bijuralism in order for them to be able to take it into account when advising client departments on legislative reforms, (ii) enhanced the capacity of the Legislative Services Branch to draft bijural legislative texts, (iii) undertook, in drafting both ver ...[+++]sions of every bill and proposed regulation that touches on provincial or territorial private law, to take care to reflect the terminology, concepts, notions and institutions of both of Canada’s private law systems; (c) since the adoption of the “Policy for Applying the Civil Code of Quebec to Federal Government Activities”, what measures are in place to ensure (i) changes to Quebec’s Civil Code are known and monitored by the government, (ii) assessment of federal legislation relative to changes to Quebec’s Civil Code, (iii) federal legislation is introduced to reflect, where necessary, changes to the Civil Code of Quebec; (d) with respect to the “Index of Bijuralism and Harmonization Caselaw” found online and indicating its most recent update was June 12, 2012, (i) how often is this page updated, (ii) given that some cases thereupon are from 2013, when was this page last updated, (iii) whose responsibility is it to update this page, (iv) what cases are currently being monitored for potential addition to this page; (e) with respect to cases involving bijuralism and harmonization, (i) in what ways are these made known to the Department, (ii) whose responsibility it is to monitor these cases, (iii), what role does the Federal government play in these cases if a party, (iv) what role does the government play if not a party, (v) who m ...

We think that's very good: participation in and representation on the tribunal, increasing the monetary cap for compensation, consideration of time-limited opportunities to file specific claims, more enlightened specific claims policy to reflect evolving common law principles such as honour of the crown, and consideration of exemption of monetary rewards from tax and own-source revenue offsets.

In reality, however, the common law is not sufficiently clear to be well understood by practitioners or the general public, nor is it completely generalizable from one case to the next, thus leaving enough ambiguity in the minds of practitioners that they are uncertain of their obligations and possible legal liability for either failing to treat or treating.

We are in a state of flux right now, and I suppose the way that the common law works out is eventually, hopefully, there will be a case that gets to the Supreme Court where the Supreme Court can tell us whether the Charter applies.