What do Bell Canada, the National Football League and Canadian-born children of Russian spies have in common? They form a trilogy of administrative law appeals, Bell-NFL-Vavilov, in which the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) formulated a new framework that will apply whenever the substance of an administrative decision is challenged in court. On March 9, a panel of Queen’s Law experts dissected the trilogy in an event called “Vavilov at First Sight.” 

Before 120 students and faculty in a Queen’s Law classroom and hundreds more via Facebook Live, Professor Emeritus David Mullan, LLM’73, provided a magisterial overview that contextualized the trilogy in the long arc of Canadian administrative law. He began by introducing the cases that have attracted much media attention. 

“Vavilov featured the world of international espionage,” he said. “It involved the Canadian Registrar of Citizenship’s revocation of citizenship of a Canadian-born son whose parents, at the time of his birth, were spies from Russia operating in Canada.”  

Bell Canada, he continued, was “a matter of great controversy among football lovers across the nation for as many as 40 years. Should the Canadian Radio-Television and Telecommunications Commission allow Canadian media…showing football’s Super Bowl to actually delete the wonderful American commercials that we all look forward to and substitute for them bland Canadian advertisements? Horror and disbelief are how the world of football greeted this rule.” The CRTC reacted by stopping the practice and the legitimacy of it doing so that was an issue. 

Dean Mark Walters, Law’89, explained the relevance of the distinction between statutory appeals and judicial review. 

Professor Colin Grey explored the ramifications of the SCC’s approach to expertise. 

Queen’s Prison Law Clinic staff lawyer Paul Quick, Law’09, focussed on the dangers of deference within the prison law context and suggested that the trilogy may provide greater protection to vulnerable persons subject to administrative discretion. 

Professor Sharry Aiken questioned the courts’ divergent approach to deference in the procedural and substantive domains of administrative law. 

Finally, Professor Jacob Weinrib offered a framework that explains the central disagreement between the majority and dissenting judgments in the trilogy and why that dispute matters. 

Watch the video and find out exactly what Queen’s Law experts have to say about the SCC rulings that have changed administrative law in Canada.