Justin Safayeni.

Good afternoon, Chief Justice, Justices.

I'm here today with my colleague, Olivia Eng, on behalf of the David Asper Center to make two key points.

First, when assessing whether the source of an alleged charter violation is a statute or the exercise of discretion pursuant to a statute, courts should carefully apply the principles of statutory interpretation to determine whether the governing statute authorizes a charter infringement.

The second and related point is that resorting too quickly to the presumption of charter conformity risks distorting the constitutional analysis and having reverse results.

There's been some discussion today about imprecise discretion and whether a power to infringe the charter is expressly conferred or necessarily implied, to use the terminology in slate communications.

And we say a more helpful framing of the question is whether the legislature intended to confer a power to infringe the charter.

Justin Safayeni.

Good afternoon, Chief Justice, Justices.

I'm here today with my colleague Olivia Eng on behalf of the David Asper Center to make two key points.

First, when assessing whether the source of an alleged charter violation is a statute or the exercise of discretion pursuant to a statute, courts should carefully apply the principles of statutory interpretation to determine whether the governing statute authorizes a charter infringement.

The second and related point is that resorting too quickly to the presumption of charter conformity risks distorting the constitutional analysis and having perverse results.

There's been some discussion today about imprecise discretion and whether a power to infringe the charter is expressly conferred or necessarily implied, to use the terminology in slate communications.

And we say a more helpful framing of the question is whether the legislature intended to confer a power to infringe the charter.

From your perspective, having gone on to litigate sort of what happens next, you know, how does the, the system actually look like from the inside? How does it function? And, and from your perspective, how well does it work?

Yeah, so you're, you're absolutely right.

I mean, the first step is, you know, you send in the, uh, the request.

It could be in the standard form or even just an email.

You go to the relevant government institution, the ministry or agency or municipality you think has the relevant documents, and you, you ask for them.

And there's kind of a modest $five fee and a default thirty-day period for them to get back to you, although that can be dragged out and, and often is.

Um, uh, but ultimately, the, the head of the institution needs to either tell you, "Look, these records you're asking for don't exist," or they have to produce them to you, or they're gonna refuse to produce them to you, uh, either in full or, or partially.

Can you talk a bit about that decision, what the court did, and, and, you know, perhaps where do you think the case itself turned? Uh, you may have hinted at it with the, uh, dissent that took place at the, at the lower level.