Unjust by Design: Canada’s Administrative Justice System

Ron Ellis

Mas 2013 · UBC Press

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Canadian legislatures regularly assign what are truly court functions to non-court, government tribunals. These executive branch “judicial” tribunals are surrogate courts and together comprise a little-known system of administrative justice that annually makes hundreds of thousands of contentious, life-altering judicial decisions concerning the everyday rights of both individuals and businesses.

This book demonstrates that, except perhaps in Quebec, the executive branch’s administrative justice system is a justice system in name only. Failing to conform to rule-of-law principles or constitutional norms, its judicial tribunals are neither independent nor, in law, impartial and are only providentially competent.

Unjust by Design describes a system in transcendent need of major restructuring. Written by a respected critic, it presents a modern theory of administrative justice fit for that purpose. It also provides detailed blueprints for the changes the author believes would be necessary if justice were to in fact assume its proper role in Canada’s administrative justice system.

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Ron Ellis is an administrative law lawyer, teacher, academic, arbitrator, and former chair and CEO of a major administrative judicial tribunal. He has been teaching, speaking, and writing about administrative justice system issues for more than thirty years.