Seite - 225 - in VULNERABLE - The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
Bild der Seite - 225 -
Text der Seite - 225 -
225Liability
of the Crown in Times of Pandemic
plaintiffs are likely to face significant hurdles in initiating proceedings
against the Crown, even in the context of a global pandemic.
Crown Immunity from Suit and Public Law Immunity
The Crown’s Immunity from Suit: The Common Law
The principle that the Crown understood as the government—
Ministers and Crown officers in their official capacity and government
departments—cannot be sued as common law became an important
feature of legal thinking at the turn of the 20th century.1
In 1947, the United Kingdom Parliament enacted the Crown
Proceedings Act, 1947,2 abolishing in part the Crown’s immunity from
suit. The Parliament of Canada followed suit shortly thereafter and
enacted the Uniform Model Act of 1950—now the Crown Liability andÂ
Proceedings Act (CLPA).3 Provinces throughout Canada have also
enacted statutes limiting provincial Crowns’ immunity from suit.
Ontario’s Crown Liability and Proceedings Act, 20194 represents the lat-
est reform in that regard. By contrast, in Quebec, the Crown5 is sub-
ject, like any ordinary individual, to the general provisions of the Civil
Code of Quebec relating to liability.6
While such statutes are thought to have marked the end of the
Crown’s immunity from suit,7 important caveats remain. First, various
public and governmental entities benefit from statutory immunities,
which are granted to them by the legislature, often on the condition
that they act in good faith. For instance, under the Public Health Act in
Quebec, “The Government, the Minister or another person may not be
1. The belief that the Crown’s immunity from suit is historically entrenched is inac-
curate; see Marie-France Fortin, A Historical Constitutional Approach to the KingÂ
Can Do No Wrong: Revisiting Crown Liability (PhD, University of Cambridge,
2020) [unpublished].
2. (UK), 1947, 10 & 11 Geo VI, c 44 [CAP].
3. CrownÂ
LiabilityÂ
andÂ
ProceedingsÂ
Act, RSC 1985, c C-50 [CLPA]. In TheÂ
KingÂ
vÂ
Cliche,
[1935] SCR 561, [1936] 1 DLR 195, the Supreme Court of Canada found that
art 1011 CCP—introduced as s 886a by the Petition of Right Act, SQ 1883, c 27—
created a right of action against the Crown.
4. SO 2019, c 7, sch 17 [Ontario CLPA].
5. More widely referred to as the State in that province, a difference in semantic
acknowledged in the CLPA, s. 1 “État.”
6. CQLR c CCQ-1991, arts 1376, 1457.
7. Similar statutes have been adopted, albeit at different times, throughout the
Commonwealth: Peter W Hogg, Patrick Monahan & Wade K Wright, Liability ofÂ
the Crown, 4th ed (Toronto: Carswell, 2011) at 8-11.
VULNERABLE
The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Titel
- VULNERABLE
- Untertitel
- The Law, Policy and Ethics of COVID-19
- Autoren
- Vanessa MacDonnell
- Jane Philpott
- Sophie Thériault
- Sridhar Venkatapuram
- Verlag
- Ottawa Press
- Datum
- 2020
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
- ISBN
- 9780776636429
- Abmessungen
- 15.2 x 22.8 cm
- Seiten
- 648
- Kategorien
- Coronavirus
- International