I blogged this from a legal standpoint last week. Still, this story from the Post is interesting:
http://www.nationalpost.com/m/story.html?id=2234418&s=Home
Natalie Alcoba, National Post
Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2009
An Ontario court has ruled in favour of a group of residents who said they should not automatically be made to pay for relatives they sponsored to immigrate to Canada, despite having pledged to do so, in a decision that could have costly implications due to the number of such immigrants who seek social assistance.
The landmark ruling by the Ontario Court of Appeal says the provincial government must consider the circumstances of immigrant sponsors and use "case-by-case discretion" when deciding whether to demand sponsors pay back the money their family members collect.
Appeal court Justices Janet Simmons, S.E. Lang and John Laskin wrote that Canada and Ontario "owe sponsors a duty of procedural fairness when enforcing sponsorship debt."
The ruling hinges on language in the legislation that says sponsorship debt "may be recovered," and which the judges believe grant the government discretion. There is "strong argument that the governments' discretion extends to forgiving sponsorship debt," the judges wrote.
James Morton
1100-5255 Yonge Street
Toronto, Ontario
M2N 6P4
416 225 2777
2 comments:
Isn't this the similar to the Khadr thing? If a government "may" collect and they have discretion then if the government uses that discretion to say everybody pays, isn't that up to the government? Or are we now saying that if the courts don't like the apparently lawful use of the discretion granted under the law then they will substitute their own discretion?
No, it's not similar to the Khadr "thing", I'm not even sure how you'd think that it was. And no, the government can't use its powers any way it wants to - there are certain rights we are entitled to and due process is one of them, duh.
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