Is it true that the Chief Justice granted royal assent to the Online Streaming Act? Within the first minute of this video it is asserted that, although the royal assent to Canadian legislation is normally granted by the governor general, in this case of the Online Streaming Act it was somehow done by the chief justice, Richard Wagner. In a quick search with search engines, I find no corroboration of this assertion. I know that normally the governor general does this, and obviously the king can do it if he wants to (and on a few occasions that's been done), but I'd never heard of the chief justice doing such a thing. What's the story here? Have there been previous cases of the chief justice rather than the governor general granting royal assent to legislation? Under what circumstances is such a thing done? How is this authorized by the constitution?
Royal Assent can be signified by one of two modes: (1) &quot;in Parliament assembled&quot;; or (2) &quot;by written declaration.&quot; It was the latter mode by which Assent was signified on April 27, 2023: On Thursday, April 27, 2023, the Right Honourable Richard Wagner, acting in his capacity as Deputy of the Governor General, signified assent in His Majesty’s name to the bills listed below. Assent was signified by written declaration, pursuant to the Royal Assent Act, S.C. 2002, c. 15.... Several justices of the Supreme Court of Canada, as well as the Secretary and Deputy Secretary to the Governor General are deputies of the Governor General: see their commissions in The Journals of the Senate, 44th Parl, 1st Sess., November 25, 2021. (Note that their commissions currently exclude from them the power of &quot;signifying Royal Assent in Parliament assembled,&quot; the first of the two listed modes of Royal Assent above.) The power to appoint deputies comes from the Constitution Act, 1867, s. 14 and the Letters Patent constituting the office of the Governor General. Section 14: It shall be lawful for the Queen, if Her Majesty thinks fit, to authorize the Governor General from Time to Time to appoint any Person or any Persons jointly or severally to be his Deputy or Deputies within any Part or Parts of Canada, and in that Capacity to exercise during the Pleasure of the Governor General such of the Powers, Authorities, and Functions of the Governor General as the Governor General deems it necessary or expedient to assign to him or them, subject to any Limitations or Directions expressed or given by the Queen; but the Appointment of such a Deputy or Deputies shall not affect the Exercise by the Governor General himself of any Power, Authority, or Function. Letters Patent, s. VII: And Whereas by The British North America Acts 1867 [Constitution Act, 1867] to 1946, it is amongst other things enacted that it shall be lawful for Us, if We think fit, to authorize Our Governor General to appoint any person or persons, jointly or severally, to be his Deputy or Deputies... Now We do hearby authorize and empower Our Governor General... to appoint any person or persons... to be his Deputy or Deputies... This is also mirrored in the provinces, where the Deputy Lieutenant Governor is typically the Chief Justice of the province. Royal Assent is reported in the Canada Gazette, the official newspaper of the Government of Canada. There are many other examples of Royal Assent being signified by the Chief Justice, acting in his or her capacity as Deputy of the Governor General.
Before getting into the technical answer to this question it is worth noting that when matters of a constitutional nature are involved then in practice it is not just a matter of a technical &quot;legal&quot; answer. Students and academics like to pose hypothetical questions such as &quot;What would happen if the Queen refused assent to a Bill?&quot; or &quot;If Parliament is supreme, could it abolish the courts?&quot; etc. The practical reality is that a liberal democracy, such as ours, ultimately relies on those in positions of power to respect the democratic conventions and preserve the constitution. When there is a legal angle to some constitutional issue the courts will play their part but, whatever legal analysis their judgments may contain, they will always have in mind the importance of maintaining our democratic system. It is also worth noting that where an Act contains an &quot;ouster&quot; clause (saying that a certificate of X shall not be questioned in any court of law) the courts always find a way to interpret that so that it does not apply in any case where the courts think they should adjudicate! Those preliminaries out of the way, I think the technical legal answer to your question is that first of all the Speaker decides and provides a certificate under s.2(2). You will see that s.2(1) deals with &quot;any other bill&quot; (your third bullet point) and s.2(2) requires a certificate from the Speaker that &quot;the provisions of this section have been duly complied with&quot; (i.e. that it is indeed in the &quot;any other bill&quot; category). Of course there is a further question of whether, if the Speaker gets it wrong, the courts could intervene and exactly how that might happen (the so-called &quot;John Bercow question&quot; of what if a Speaker goes rogue), but the initial technical answer to you question is &quot;the Speaker of the House of Commons&quot;.
Yes An American would spell it as “your honor,” but yes, this is how we refer to all judges. This is simply a custom that shows respect. There is no law or concrete fact I could cite that requires this; it is more of a “tradition.” But I have seen plenty of court proceedings (mostly on TV), and I can confirm that all judges, ranging from small claims court to the Supreme Court, are called “Your honor.” (The chief justice of the Supreme Court is sometimes addressed as “Chief Justice.”) Googling articles about courtroom etiquette also mostly leads to people who agree with this. Apparently, there are some countries where it is customary to say “my honor,” or even something else altogether. Sometimes people from these countries immigrate to the US and continue using their local terminology in a US court. Although every judge is different, my perception is that most judges try to be inclusive of other cultures, and if whatever term they use is intended as a sign of respect, most judges will usually just interpret it as it was intended.
In Canada, copyright means "the sole right to produce or reproduce the work or any substantial part thereof in any material form whatever, to perform the work or any substantial part thereof in public..." (Copyright Act §3(1)). This question asks whether the work or any substantial part of the work is reproduced when an individual torrent chunk (typically approximately 1/1500th of a file) is downloaded to volatile RAM and immediately discarded.1 If not, is a substantial part of the work reproduced if the downloader-and-discarder repeats the activity on more of the torrent's chunks (each being discarded before downloading another torrent chunk)? Substantiality As quoted above from the Copyright Act, when reproducing only a portion of a work, the statute only prohibits reproduction of a "substantial part" of the work. "[T]he Act does not protect every “particle” of an original work" (Cinar Corporation v. Robinson, 2013 SCC 73). Substantiality is not measured by quantity. "Whether a part is substantial must be decided by its quality rather than its quantity" (Ladbroke (Football), Ltd. v. William Hill (Football), Ltd., [1964]). Copyright Board's substantiality decisions Is a small chunk of a torrent a substantial part? The Copyright Board has looked to several signals in judging substantiality, one of which is whether "[the part] may be so closely identified to the work as to allow the reader to recognize the work" (License Application by Pointe-à-Callière, Montreal Museum of Archeology and History for the Reproduction of Quotations, Copyright Board of Canada [2004]). In some video codecs, possessing 1/1500th of the encoded file would not allow playback such that the result would be recognizable as a portion of the original. The Copyright Board has also held that in the case of XM satellite receivers, which hold "4 to 6 seconds of the Satellite Services' multiplex signal at all times in its random access memory (RAM)", that "the 4 to 6 second buffer fails to satisfy the substantiality requirement. It is not a substantial part of the protected work." (Collective Administration of Performing Rights and of Communication Rights (Re) [2009]). If downloading and discarding one torrent chunk is not reproduction of a substantial part, does downloading and discarding multiple (even all) chunks become a reproduction of a substantial part of the work? The Copyright Board has said, regarding the 4-6 second buffer in the XM satellite receiver (ibid.): "The rolling 4 to 6 seconds of a musical work is not an aggregate of an entire work. At no time does a subscriber possess a series of 4 to 6 second clips which when taken together would constitute a substantial part of the work. It matters not that over time the totality of all works transmitted are reproduced. We are dealing with a rolling buffer and at no time can we line up all of the fragmented copies amounting to one complete copy of a musical work." Discussion In my opinion, downloading a chunk of a torrent file to RAM and immediately discarding it is not reproduction of a work or a substantial part thereof. It is not copyright infringement. Repeating this activity for several torrent chunks of the same torrent file is likewise not copyright infringement. The above analysis is dependent on assumptions regarding the type of file (a media file, encoded using a format that doesn't produce recognizable sub-portions2, split into approximately 1500 chunks). Other types of files and torrents would not fall under this analysis and thus the hypothetical download-and-discard activity could still be infringement. Consider a 5 minute .wav file, split into a torrent having only 2 chunks. A 2.5 minute .wav chunk would be recognizable as a portion of the 5 minute original, and 2.5 minutes of a 5 minute work would be much more likely to be considered a substantial part. Notes 1. I know of no torrent client that behaves this way. It would have to be a custom-written torrent client designed specifically for this ostensibly useless task. 2. Although, I don't think the assumption of unrecognizable subportions is necessary, since the 4-6 second buffer in the XM Satellite receiver was recognizable.
Such an order, like all other orders and decisions, is voted on at a conference of justices. Normally all 9 are present and vote, unless one or more is recused. But if one or more happens to be absent, those present vote. A majority of those present an voting is enough for such an order. Dissents from such orders are quite unusual, but any justice may file one if s/he so elects. Reasons for such orders are not normally provided. The usual standard is that such relief is only granted if A) one party will be irreparably harmed by delay, and B) that party has a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on the merits when the matter is finally decided. Presumably a majority of the Justices did not feel that this standard was met. Beyond that, no one can say.
It is certainly true that different states who share a Head of State can have different succession rules. Thus William IV of the United Kingdom was also King of Hannover. The UK allowed female succession, so Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom; Hannover didn't, so he was succeeded by Ernest Augustus there. At the moment, all the Commonwealth Realms of which Elizabeth is Head of State have the same rules of succession. They all changed the rules regarding whether a first-born girl would be heir apparent together. They could decide to have different rules of succession, but they probably won't.
No rights are absolute. In particular, Charter s. 1 specifies rights are &quot;subject only to reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.&quot; Generally speaking, when rights are infringed the courts will consider it a justifiable infringement if it serves a substantial purpose while proportionate, rational and minimally infringing (Oakes test, though there's a heap of subsequent case law refining the test). While the exact order text isn't yet available, determining constitutionality would typically be a detailed analysis a judge would have to perform after hearing arguments from parties to a case (I assume the order will eventually be published here). In my own opinion, I would imagine such an order without appropriate medical exemption would be unconstitutional. It would seem to be disproportionate to deny freedom of movement to a presumably very small number of persons who could do little to remedy their medical condition. As a similar example from another province, a Quebec court ruled that a Covid-19 curfew requiring people to remain inside at night would not apply to homeless people due to discriminatory and disproportionate effect. Assuming the order to be similar in nature to existing BC orders on gatherings and mask-wearing, I would imagine lack of religious exceptions to be constitutional, as those orders have already been challenged and upheld against religious objections (though I believe appeals are still possible). The nature of the identified infringements against religious groups was considered reasonably proportionate, rational and minimal enough when weighed against the legitimate governmental need to contain the spread of Covid-19. P.S. The Canadian Bill of Rights has in practice been largely superseded by the Charter. Furthermore, it is completely inapplicable here as it is a federal statute with no effect on provincial matters.
Questions about "why a law is ..." are political questions not legal questions and you may get better traction on politics. However, I will address the legal issues and offer some speculation on the politics. The states named in the preamble to the Constitution (an Act of British Parliament) as original states were New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. Western Australia was not named at the time of the passing of the Act or Royal Assent because the people of that colony had not vet made their mind up. Legal Issues WA decided to join in a vote held on 31 December 1900 and Australia came into being on 1 January 1901. Therefore, even though not named as such, WA was an "original state". Since all 6 states in the Federation are "original states" the clauses have no practical effect at present. However, there have been a number of proposals to add new states, either by subdividing existing states or by granting statehood to the territories of Northern Territory and/or the Australian Capital Territory. If such were to come to pass, the clauses would have practical effect. In 1998, Norther Territorials rejected an offer of statehood that would have given them 3 senators as a state and 2 representatives based on population (currently they have 2 senators and 2 representatives). Clearly, they were not being given the same privileges as an "original state". In 2015 all Australian governments agreed in principle that the NT should become a state by 2018, however, as it is now 2017 and no action has been taken this seems unlikely. Political Issues Politics is complicated: just as much in the late 19th century as it is in the early 21st. Negotiations between the colonies were fraught and federation was by no means a certain outcome. New Zealand and Fiji dropped out early and each forged its own path to nationhood. However, by the late 1890s it was clear that the 5 eastern colonies would federate with or without Western Australia. It seems likely that this provision served multiple purposes including: putting pressure on WA to join at the outset - the deal they got as a "Johnny come lately" may not have been as good. protecting "white" Australia - the drafters of the Constitution were men of their times, that is to say: racist, misogynist bigots. Any non-original states were likely to be former British colonies in the Pacific or South-East Asia, this clause would allow the nation to reduce the influence these non-white states might have.