When there is a legal requirement for someone to be &#39;qualified and competent&#39; to carry out a job, how would this be tested? The Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 were recently introduced in England and require that landlords carry out an inspection and testing of the electrical installation in their properties at least every 5 years. This must be carried out by an electrician deemed 'qualified and competent', which is defined as such in the guidance here (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/electrical-safety-standards-in-the-private-rented-sector-guidance-for-landlords-tenants-and-local-authorities/guide-for-landlords-electrical-safety-standards-in-the-private-rented-sector): &quot;When commissioning an inspection, in order to establish if a person is qualified and competent landlords can: check if the inspector is a member of a competent person scheme; or require the inspector to sign a checklist certifying their competence, including their experience, whether they have adequate insurance and hold a qualification covering the current version of the Wiring Regulations and the periodic inspection, testing and certification of electrical installations.&quot; The second bullet point seems to have been kept deliberately vague and has led to confusion among electricians as to who would qualify to conduct the inspection and testing and fill out an appropriate report. If somebody believes they can fulfil the requirements of the second bullet point, i.e. they have demonstrable experience working as an electrician, have adequate insurance and hold qualifications from a recognised institution like City &amp; Guilds covering the current version of the Wiring Regulations and the periodic inspection, testing and certification of electrical installations, would they legally be able to conduct these checks? It seems to me that the answer, given the vagueness of these regulations, should be an obvious 'yes'. However, having asked around on some electrician forums, it's been pointed out that the important term is 'competence'. Is this really an important term, and if so, how would this be tested?
When a court is required to decide whether someone is professionally “qualified” or “competent,” it will generally consider the opinion of expert witnesses from that profession. For example, in Stothers (M &amp; E) Ltd v Leeway Stothers Ltd [2011] NIQB 35, a building contractor claimed that an electrical contractor had breached a contract requiring work to be done by “qualified electricians.” Two of the electricians had no formal qualifications, but through experience, had acquired “grandfather rights” entitling them to work as electricians. The four experts disagreed as to whether these electricians were “qualified.” After hearing from the experts, the judge decided that the electricians were not “qualified,” for the purpose of that specific contract, because they had not fulfilled the requirements of an objective standard. It is not possible to say, in general, if someone who “believes … they have demonstrable experience working as an electrician, have adequate insurance and hold qualifications from a recognised institution” is “competent to undertake the inspection and testing required” in a particular case. The person’s belief may be incorrect or unreasonable. The inspection and testing required may be unusually complicated. Expert witnesses can give evidence about this. If there are conflicting opinions, the court must make a decision based on the facts of the particular case and the purpose of the legal requirement, as occurred in Stothers. The Electrical Safety Standards in the Private Rented Sector (England) Regulations 2020 require that a “qualified person” be “competent” to work “in accordance with the electrical safety standards,” namely the Wiring Regulations, BS 7671: 2018(3). This article in Professional Electrician &amp; Installer analyses regulation 621.5 of BS 7671, which requires that “periodic inspection and testing shall be undertaken by a skilled person … competent in such work.” Such analysis of a specialised industry standard, if presented by an appropriate expert, could be adopted by the court.
The B.C. Human Rights Code exempts age restrictions for 55+ in relation to tenancy. See Human Rights Code, s. 10. The subsection prohibiting discrimination in tenancy on the basis of age &quot;does not apply&quot;: if the space is a rental unit in residential premises in which every rental unit is reserved for rental to a person who has reached 55 years of age or to 2 or more persons, at least one of whom has reached 55 years of age Further, as to condominium bylaws, in 2022, the Province enacted Bill 44, the Building and Strata Statutes Amendment Act, which makes any strata age restriction below the age of 55 invalid (which you have quoted a portion of). Human Rights Tribunal The Human Rights Tribunal can only provide remedies for claims arising under the Human Rights Code. Given that the Human Rights Code does not provide a basis for discrimination claims in tenancy when the age of distinction is 55+, any valid strata by-law relating to age of residents will by definition fall outside of the scope of a Human Rights Code complaint. And even when the Strata Property Act allowed all sorts of age restrictions, the BC Human Rights Code does not provide a remedy when the distinction is authorized by another act (see s. 41(2); Hallonquist v. Strata Plan NW307 and another, 2014 BCHRT 117): Nothing in this Code prohibits a distinction on the basis of age if that distinction is permitted or required by any Act or regulation. Constitutional challenge in a court You also ask about a challenge in a court. I assume you consider that the challenge would be based on s. 15(1) of the Charter (equality rights). There are three potential targets of the challenge: the strata by-law that restricts residency to people aged 55+; the provincial statute prohibiting strata by-laws from imposing any age restriction unless it is an age restriction based on an age not less than 55 years; the carve-out in the Human Rights Code for tenancy restrictions for ages 55+ The Charter challenge to the strata by-law itself would face the barrier that a British Columbia court has held that stratas are not &quot;government&quot; for the purpose of the Charter, so are not subject to Charter challenges: Strata Plan NW 499 v. Kirk, 2015 BCSC 1487. I have quickly added this final portion in response to a clarification of the question, but there is more to say. I will return to explain the law relating to partially ameliorative legislation.
In summary, At the time of writing, Michael Gove has overall ministerial responsibility for making planning regulations, with a good part of the role delegated to Rachel Maclean as Minister of State for Housing. The detail of regulatory verbiage is the work of civil service lawyers, based on policy formed within the department as a result of the general political process. There are various rules for how these functions arise and get transferred around government, described below. The Secretary of State can make regulations about flag display These pieces of secondary legislation, as their names suggest, are made under the authority of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Several sections of the Act empower regulations to be made by &quot;the Secretary of State&quot;, e.g. in s.220(1) we read Regulations under this Act shall make provision for restricting or regulating the display of advertisements so far as appears to the Secretary of State to be expedient in the interests of amenity or public safety. and the full Parliamentary procedure for making them is spelled out in s.333. This comports with the regulatory preambles, e.g. for the 2007 regulations, saying: The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in exercise of the powers conferred by sections 220, 221, 223(1), 224(3) and 333(1) of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, makes the following Regulations &quot;The Secretary of State&quot; means a specific Secretary chosen by the Prime Minister Note that the Act just said &quot;the Secretary of State&quot;, whereas we have just read about a specific Secretary. What's going on here is that primary legislation just wants to say &quot;whoever in Cabinet has a job that is most relevant&quot;, since functions get transferred around, departments created or abolished, etc., and nobody really wants to update a zillion Acts every time that happens. Instead, there is a framework pattern where powers will be given to &quot;the Secretary of State&quot; generally, but will be executed by a specific one according to the division of responsibilities in the government of the day. That will sometimes be just a matter of agreement within Cabinet, but at other times be encoded in secondary legislation - a &quot;Transfer of Functions Order&quot;. Those Orders are also needed to handle special situations like - transferring property and legal obligations when departments are created, merged, split or abolished making amendments to legislation which did happen to mention a specific minister ministers who are not a &quot;Secretary of State&quot; as such, but hold another ministerial title, such as &quot;Lord Privy Seal&quot; These Orders are made under the Ministers of the Crown Act 1975, and are in the form of orders of the King on the advice of the Privy Council - which is to say, that the Prime Minister decides who does which jobs. Historically, this is something of an accident, since the number of Secretaries of State has increased along with the scope of government, and it was convenient to appoint lots of people to the same formal office rather than invent fresh jobs - especially in the days before ministers were paid. In any case, flag decisions would currently be made under the authority of the minister responsible for planning affairs, the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, Michael Gove. That comes from a 2021 order when that position was created, inheriting all functions from the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government. Those in turn derive from a 2018 order taking them from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, and so on back in time. SoS authority can be exercised by other people who work for him Additionally, the SoS can delegate functions to junior ministers; for example, the 2021 regulations state that they are Signed by authority of the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government Christopher PincherMinister of StateMinistry of Housing, Communities and Local Government Intra-departmental delegation of functions also requires the agreement of the Prime Minister, although some functions must be performed by the Secretary of State personally. That relates to the so-called &quot;Carltona doctrine&quot;, named for a 1943 court case Carltona Ltd v Commissioners of Works [1943] 2 All ER 560, which establishes that a minister is generally responsible for his whole department, and that when some function is conferred on the Secretary of State, it usually doesn't mean that he has to do it himself. Most administrative functions are like that, although the actual laying of secondary legislation before Parliament has to be done by a member of Parliament, i.e. a member of the ministerial team. Following the downfall of Mr Pincher, the junior minister responsible for planning is currently Rachel Maclean, so she would be likely to be taking lead responsibility for putting through planning regulations. So all this doesn't mean that Mr Gove personally decides which flags fall into which category, although observers of his career know that we can't rule that out. But he is responsible for the actions of his department, and the secondary legislation would be laid before Parliament in his name and on his instructions. On the making of flags and sausages Regarding &quot;how and on what considerations&quot; these decisions are made, I have no specific knowledge for flag-related policy. But in general, the secondary legislation is written by civil service lawyers on the basis of government policy, and then approved (or at least not disapproved) by Parliament. For example, after Brexit, the EU flag was removed from the list. The mechanism would be that various people who had never heard of the Town and Country Planning Act became upset about flying of the EU flag, and either wrote to ministers or were Cabinet ministers already. Internally to the department, there would have been a mandate to stop the flag being flown, civil servants would figure out the legal steps, and draft the statutory instrument. In the end we get a regulation saying In Class H in Schedule 1, in paragraph (b) of column (1) omit the words &quot;the European Union,&quot;. even though only planning experts would know or care about &quot;Class H in Schedule 1&quot;. Similar remarks apply to the companion regulation giving prominence to the Union flag over the Scottish flag, which was a political reaction in Westminster to the SNP-led government in Scotland. Someone who is upset about a regulation, or just wants it to be different, may be able to challenge it through the political process in the same sort of way. There are also avenues for judicial review, if regulations have been made in a way which is irrational, or exceeding the scope of what the original Act allowed, or other similar reasons - but these are difficult to pursue in court. For example, it is more than three months since the 2021 regulations were made, so it is now too late to mount a judicial challenge.
It seems like a lot of &quot;punishments&quot; can be applied to a person without having to go to court. Yes, because everyone has the right and freedom to associate, or dissociate, with other people, and the freedom of contract, at least when the state does not decide to interfere. The state, owing to its monopoly of legitimate violence, has a duty towards everyone under its rule and the people in many countries decided that the state's power should be significantly limited with judicial supervision where individual rights and freedoms are implicated. Other individuals or legal persons do not in general owe a duty to be friend with you or to sign or continue a labour or rental contract with you. At the same time, the people and their government have also decided in certain situations there exists a power imbalance (e.g. between the landlord and the tenant, the employer and the employee, groups suffering from discrimination and stereotypes) where unlimited freedom of association and contract not only harms the individual's human dignity but also harms the society as a whole (e.g. homeless and unemployment, which may lead to increased crimes etc.). Thus, in some situations, the law prohibits discrimination and provides for legal rights generally for the more vulnerable. However, this is a decision that is undertaken by each jurisdiction. A court order is only required if the law says that you normally have a legal entitlement but the state or someone else wants to take it away or limit it, or if the law explicitly requires a procedure before the court. Since you tagged the question with canada... Can a person be fired ... without a court order? Yes. However, in Canada, all jurisdictions have labour laws that regulate dismissal of an employee. Dismissal without cause usually requires notice period and/or severances, depending on the length of employment. Dismissal for cause can be challenged in court and the employer has the burden of proof to justify the cause on a balance of probabilities (more probably than not) and the terminated employee will have the right to have them heard before the court and present their evidences. If the person occupied a unionized position, they may also be able to file grievances with the union before an arbitrator, depending on the text of the collective agreement. The collective agreements also often provide for procedural requirements before the dismissal of an employee in a unionized position. Violation of these procedural requirements may lead to the annul of dismissal or awards of damages. Can a person be banned ... without a court order? Yes. You have no general right to be on another person's property in Canada. Your rights end where others' property (or other) rights begin. Like said in the beginning, this is a societal decision and an act of balancing particular to each jurisdiction, for example, in some places, there exists a right to roam over certain publicly accessible lands. The property owner or another person otherwise legally authorized has the authority to decide who they want on their property (which means what is one's own), subject to certain narrow exceptions, under common law and provincial trespassing acts. Your neighbour cannot prevent you from crossing on their land if you have a valid easement and are not abusing it. But if you are abusing your easement, your neighbour may take you to court for an order. Here the property owner includes the state. However, like almost all decisions made by the state, in Canada and many other countries with the rule of law, can be judicially reviewed for their reasonableness, and sometimes correctness. Like all decisions made by the state, trespassing notices may be challenged if the decision is arbitrary or without legal basis. Can a person be evicted ... without a court order? No. In all jurisdictions in Canada, eviction, that is, the forced removal of tenant from a premise, can only be carried out by sheriffs or other legally authorized officers upon an order from a court or tribunal (often called Landlord and Tenant Board or similar), with exceptions for certain tenancies (e.g. where the landlord and the tenant share living area). Court order is not required for the termination of a tenancy; but the termination of tenancy can only be achieved if the tenant agrees or a tribunal or court orders so. Does Habeas corpus come into play in any of these situations No. Habeas corpus means &quot;that you have the body&quot;, which is an order from a judicial official to command the state to bring someone in its custody before the court, so that the legality of their detention by the state may be determined. In Canada, habeas corpus only protects liberty interests of an individual.
Such laws or rules most likely would be on a state-by-state basis. As an example, a rule in Minnesota (and the next part which can be accessed with the arrow in the upper right of the web page) requires that &quot;all electrical equipment, including material, fittings, devices, apparatus, fixtures, appliances, and utilization equipment, used as part of, or in connection with, an electrical installation shall be listed and labeled by a testing laboratory.&quot; This rule only forbids use of unlisted cheater plugs, not sale. I have not found a law or rule that forbids selling them. Searching the usual places online, I see it is possible to find 3 prong to 2 prong adapters that are UL listed. I will add that essentially the same skills are needed to figure out whether a cheater plug is more or less safe to use in a certain receptacle as would be needed to replace the two-prong receptacle with a three-prong one, and a properly installed three-prong receptacle is going to be safer.
In Great Britain Employees have two types of protections: contractual and statutory. It would be in breach of contract (&quot;wrongful dismissal&quot;) for an employer to dismiss without notice for job hunting but contractually there is nothing to stop an employer dismissing for any reason if they give the notice required (which may be only a week or two, say). Statutory protection may, however, prevent &quot;unfair dismissal&quot; but this generally only applies if someone has been employed for at least two years. There are some exceptions - e.g. dismissal as an act of religious/racial/sex discrimination etc. is prohibited even if the employee has less than 2 years service but these exceptions do not include job-hunting. So someone who has been employed for less than 2 years could be dismissed with notice for job hunting. There are also contractual and statutory protections in Northern Ireland. The contractual ones are the same as in the rest of the UK but some of the details of the statutory protections are different from GB.
The cited provision is: A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex. This language originates in the Sex Discrimination (Gender Reassignment) Regulations 1999. This statutory instrument was made in response to a 1996 decision of the European Court of Justice (P v S and Cornwall County Council, C-13/94) that Council Directive 76/207/EEC of 9 February 1976 , regarding equal treatment of men and women, also covered discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment. The regulations were made in order to bring domestic law up to date with the EU requirement, by amending the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. The definition at the time, found in the amended section 82, was: &quot;gender reassignment&quot; means a process which is undertaken under medical supervision for the purpose of reassigning a person’s sex by changing physiological or other characteristics of sex, and includes any part of such a process So the idea of &quot;other characteristics&quot; or &quot;other attributes&quot; comes from the 1999 version of the law. I expect that the change to &quot;attributes&quot; is simply because the Equality Act 2010 uses the term &quot;characteristic&quot; to mean something else, as it consolidates many different regimes about discrimination on the basis of sex, race, disability, etc., all of which are called &quot;characteristics&quot;. The more recent text removes the part about &quot;medical supervision&quot;, and explicitly includes people at any stage of transition. Explanatory Notes to the 2010 Act give the example: A person who was born physically female decides to spend the rest of her life as a man. He starts and continues to live as a man. He decides not to seek medical advice as he successfully ‘passes’ as a man without the need for any medical intervention. He would have the protected characteristic of gender reassignment for the purposes of the Act. (These notes are not binding in law but they do give a good idea of what the drafters meant to say. The concept of 'passes' is also not the most sensitive language to bring in, since trans people do not necessarily want to measure themselves by their ability to pass undetected, and may present differently in different contexts.) The example shows that someone can have the protected characteristic without having, or contemplating, any change to their body. So from this example, the other attributes of sex would include all those ways in which the man &quot;continues to live as a man&quot;. From general knowledge of trans men, that could include using a masculine name and pronouns; wearing traditionally-male clothes; wearing a binder, baggy clothing, padding in the crotch, or other ways to suggest a more masculine than feminine body; having a traditionally-male haircut; using traditionally-masculine body language; pitching the voice lower; and so on. The situation for trans women would be parallel. These things are all attributes of sex, in that our society abounds in stereotypes of what is a &quot;manly handshake&quot;, or a &quot;girly drink&quot;, or otherwise associated with a particular sex. They are to do with behaviour more than the body.
An employer has a duty of care to employees and must take steps to ensure their safety. Notably: 125 (1) Without restricting the generality of section 124, every employer shall, in respect of every work place controlled by the employer and, in respect of every work activity carried out by an employee in a work place that is not controlled by the employer, to the extent that the employer controls the activity, ... (y) ensure that the activities of every person granted access to the work place do not endanger the health and safety of employees; (Canada Labour Code (R.S.C., 1985, c. L-2)) If there is a reasonable belief that the other employee is a danger to you, they should take reasonable steps to prevent this. If they choose to ignore this, they may be liable. Whether or not there is a reasonable belief they are a danger to you or others here is unclear. Being annoying or rude does not endanger you and they haven't made threats towards you (I assume, since you'd have mentioned otherwise).