{"id":103989,"date":"2026-08-01T04:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T08:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=103989"},"modified":"2026-07-31T13:46:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T17:46:01","slug":"supreme-court-of-canada-surprisingly-rules-against-the-federal-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/08\/01\/supreme-court-of-canada-surprisingly-rules-against-the-federal-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Supreme Court of Canada surprisingly rules against the federal government"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the last ten years, it’s been a running joke that the federal government’s conflicts of interest would, at most, result in a $500 fine and an insincere promise not to do it again. Because that’s pretty much what has been happening since the early years of the Trudeau government. In a shocking development, however, the Supreme Court of Canada kicked over the apple cart and struck down the relevant section of the Conflict of Interest Act<\/em> which the feds had found so useful<\/a> over the years:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“Supreme Court of Canada, Ottawa”<\/a>by daniel0685<\/a><\/span> is licensed under CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

So the Supreme Court of Canada just did something almost no one in Ottawa expected. They ruled against the government. Unanimously. On a case the people who run this country spent five years trying to kill.<\/p>\n

Yesterday the Court, in a decision written by Chief Justice Richard Wagner, said section 66 of the Conflict of Interest Act<\/em> is unconstitutional. That was the clause designed to keep the federal Ethics Commissioner’s rulings largely beyond the reach of the courts. Errors of fact. Errors of law. None of your business. Parliament put a lock on the door and the Supreme Court just kicked it in.<\/p>\n

This is not some abstract legal theory. This is the shield that protected Mario Dion’s May 13, 2021 report clearing Justin Trudeau in the WE Charity scandal. That clearance is no longer sealed. Stage 2 of Democracy Watch’s case now goes forward at the Federal Court of Appeal. The actual mistakes in that report finally get examined in open court.<\/p>\n

You remember the scandal. Summer of 2020. The Trudeau government hands WE Charity a near-billion-dollar sole-source deal to run the Canada Student Service Grant program. WE had deep family connections to the Prime Minister. Sophie Gr\u00e9goire Trudeau volunteered as an ambassador and hosted a podcast for them. Margaret Trudeau and Alexandre Trudeau had collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees. Justin Trudeau himself had been a regular at their events for years.<\/p>\n

The optics were so bad even Trudeau eventually admitted there was an appearance of conflict and that he should have recused himself. Bill Morneau got dinged. Dion cleared the Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

Democracy Watch filed for judicial review in June 2021. They pointed to four specific problems with Dion’s ruling.<\/p>\n

First, Dion refused to find a real or potential conflict of interest. He had previously defined private interests to include social and political interests. The grant advanced Sophie’s standing with WE and the family’s political brand. Dion simply ignored his own earlier reasoning.<\/p>\n

Second, he claimed the Conflict of Interest Act<\/em> does not cover apparent conflicts, only real or potential ones. That is not what the statute says. The purpose clauses and the prohibitions in sections 4 and 6 are broader. A Federal Court of Appeal decision from 2009 already confirmed the Act<\/em> reaches appearances. Dion’s own report noted that recusal is always advisable when an appearance exists. Trudeau had already conceded the point.<\/p>\n

Third, Dion would not find that Trudeau and the Kielburger brothers were friends. The Act<\/em> prohibits furthering the private interests of friends. Craig Kielburger had publicly called Trudeau a friend. Trudeau had described them the same way in a speech. The relationship was not distant. Dion waved it away.<\/p>\n

Fourth, he refused to apply the broad prohibition against improperly furthering another person’s private interests. In his earlier SNC-Lavalin report, Dion treated violations of the Prime Minister’s own ethical code as improper. That code specifically bans appearances of conflict. Dion carved the law into pieces to reach the result he wanted.<\/p>\n

These are not technicalities. They go to whether the Ethics Commissioner enforced the statute Parliament wrote or rewrote it to protect the Prime Minister.<\/p>\n

Then the system did what the system always does. The Attorney General of Canada, not the Ethics Commissioner, defended the ruling in court. The same government whose Cabinet is regulated by the Commissioner gets to defend the Commissioner when he clears those same people. Classic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the last ten years, it’s been a running joke that the federal government’s conflicts of interest would, at most, result in a $500 fine and an insincere promise not to do it again. Because that’s pretty much what has been happening since the early years of the Trudeau government. In a shocking development, however, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,84,9],"tags":[1596,715,271,887,413,752],"class_list":["post-103989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-law","tag-conflictofinterest","tag-constitution","tag-ethics","tag-justintrudeau","tag-scandal","tag-supremecourt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-r3f","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":103990,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103989\/revisions\/103990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}