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07/28/2026

🎙️ Can the government force a whole country to rest on Sunday?

In 1982, a Calgary drug store refused to close on Sunday, and the case that followed would go all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.

In this episode of the podcast Shaping Canada, we welcome Professor Howard Kislowicz of the University of Calgary to unpack two decisions that quietly shaped freedom of religion in this country.

The first, Big M Drug Mart (1985), began with that Calgary drug store and became the very first freedom-of-religion case to reach the Supreme Court under the new Charter. The second, Amselem (2004), a Montreal condo dispute two decades later, asked a very different question. How the Court answered these two cases tells us something surprising about what religious freedom really protects, and why it matters more than ever in a diverse society.

Want to know more? Listen to the full episode 👇
shaping-canada.ca or on your favorite podcast platform

This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada.


Photo: University of Calgary

07/28/2026

🎙️ How did Canada move from formal equality to real, substantive equality?

Professor Kerri Froc unpacks Andrews (1989), the first Supreme Court ruling to define discrimination under the Charter.

Before the Charter, courts kept finding ways around equality, a woman denied unemployment insurance because she was pregnant wasn't "discrimination against women," they said, just against "people who were pregnant."

Then came Andrews. A British citizen challenged the rule that you had to be Canadian to be called to the bar in B.C., and the Supreme Court seized the moment to build the equality test we still use today, holding that treating everyone "the same" isn't enough to be fair.

From "discrete and insular minorities" to Section 28 as a potential "giant killer," this episode traces forty years of the fight for equality in Canada.

🎧 Listen to this episode on shaping-canada.ca
or https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBQaFif3Ceoc&si=h5J0-JUqF3bghjQ7

This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada.


Photo: University of New Brunswick

07/28/2026

🎙️ Rights that could be revoked "at the will of the Sovereign", until Sparrow

On this episode of the Shaping Canada podcast, Professors Naiomi Metallic and Karen Drake turn to a cornerstone of Indigenous rights law: R. v. Sparrow.

💬 Professor Naiomi Metallic: "Essentially that's what extinguishment is. It is the elimination, the revocation of rights at the will of the Sovereign."

What is "extinguishment"? Before Sparrow, Canadian law treated Aboriginal rights as revocable, the 1888 St. Catherine's Milling decision called them "dependent on the goodwill of the Sovereign."

In 1990, R. v. Sparrow began to change that: the Crown now needs a "clear and plain intention" to extinguish a right, and mere regulation is not enough.
But Metallic asks the harder question, why do we accept that Indigenous rights can be extinguished at all, when we would never say the same about a Charter right?

🎧 Listen to the full episode here: https://rivercastmedia.com/show/shaping-canada/
— or on your favourite podcast platform —

This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada.
A Rivercastmedia production


Photo : University of Alberta

07/28/2026

🎙️ The High-Water Mark: R. v. Sparrow and Section 35

In this Shaping Canada podcast episode, we're talking about another landmark decision, Indigenous rights and the Sparrow case, with Professors Karen Drake and Naiomi Metallic.

💬Professor Karen Drake: "In Sparrow, in order to answer that question, all we have to do is look to the laws of Indigenous people themselves. That's what the Court does in Sparrow."

Why "high watermark"?
In 1990, R. v. Sparrow held that a Musqueam fisher's Aboriginal right had not been extinguished by mere regulation, and that the Crown needs a "clear and plain intention" to take a right away.

To establish that right, the Court looked to Indigenous law itself. Six years later, Van der Peet raised the bar dramatically, and the justification test has broadened ever since.

Where does the law go next? Drake and Metallic point to UNDRIP and the Montour decision as tools to fix the cracks Sparrow left behind.

🎧 Listen to the full episode here: https://rivercastmedia.com/show/shaping-canada/
— or on your favourite podcast platform —

This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada.
A Rivercastmedia production


Photo : JFKLaw

07/28/2026

🎙️ When can a court overturn its own precedent ?

Professor Jocelyn Downie of Dalhousie University - Schulich School of Law on the reasoning that allowed Carter to succeed where Rodriguez had failed two decades earlier.

💬 "We have to recognize that a decision made decades ago could be wrong. It could be no longer valid. And when the facts change, when the law changes, that's the time to say, let's look at this again."

Revisiting Stare Decisis
In 1993, the Supreme Court upheld the criminal ban on assisted su***de in Rodriguez, in a narrow 5-4 decision. Two decades later, a trial judge in British Columbia was asked to relitigate the same question, despite being bound, in principle, by that higher court precedent.

Professor Downie explains how Justice Lynn Smith found her way past stare decisis: not by ignoring the doctrine, but by applying its own internal test. Had the facts changed? Had the law changed? On both counts, the answer was yes, decades of evidence had shown the feared "slippery slope" to be a mirage, and new Charter principles like overbreadth and gross disproportionality had emerged in the years since Rodriguez.

The Supreme Court's response was unequivocal: it endorsed her reasoning unanimously, signing the Carter decision "By The Court", a rare mark of institutional consensus on a question of profound significance.

🎧 Listen to the full episode : https://rivercastmedia.com/show/shaping-canada/

This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada.
A Rivercastmedia production.

Photo : wikipedia

07/28/2026

🎙️ Your home is your castle. But what about your phone, your text messages, your IP address ?

Professor François Tanguay-Renaud York University - Osgoode Hall Law School on Hunter v. Southam and the future of Section 8.

💬 "Trying to fit everything under the heading of privacy kind of clouds other values that are important and worthy of protection when it comes to the gathering of information."

In 1982, investigators walked into an Edmonton newspaper's offices with a government certificate, no judge, no warrant. The Supreme Court's response built the warrant requirement we still live by. But was "privacy" always the right organizing concept? And does it hold in an age of IP addresses, text messages, and aggregated data?

🎧 Listen here: https://rivercastmedia.com/show/shaping-canada/

This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada. A Rivercastmedia production.


Photo : York University

07/28/2026

🎙️ A small amount of cannabis = A life sentence on the table
Listen to a case that changed Canada.

In 1981, David Oakes was sitting in his car near a tavern in London, Ontario when police tapped on his window. They found a small amount of cannabis and some cash. Under Canadian law at the time, that was enough, not just to charge him with possession, but to automatically presume he was a drug trafficker. He didn't have to be proven guilty. He had to prove his innocence. Or face life imprisonment.

The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms had just come into force in 1982. And this case : R. v. Oakes, became one of the first major tests of what it actually meant to have constitutionally protected rights in Canada. Could the government override the presumption of innocence in the name of fighting drug crime? The Supreme Court of Canada said no.

In this episode of the podcast Shaping Canada, we are joined by two constitutional scholars from The University of British Columbia's Peter A. Allard School of Law: Professor Joel Bakan, who clerked for Chief Justice Brian Dickson at the very moment this decision was being written, and Professor Marcus Moore, Associate Professor and former law clerk to Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin. Professor Bakan brings a perspective no one else can on how this unlikely case became a cornerstone of Canadian constitutional law.

💬 "I don't think in that moment in 1981 he could have imagined that his case would end up becoming a seminal and definitive leading case in Canadian constitutional law, but that is what happened."
Professor Joel Bakan (speaking of David Oakes)

🎧 Curious how a small drug possession case became one of the most cited decisions in Canadian constitutional history? Hear Professor Joel Bakan and Professor Marcus Moore tell the full story, including what it was like to be inside the Court as it happened.

Listen to the full episode : https://rivercastmedia.com/show/shaping-canada/

This project has been made possible by the Government of Canada.
A Rivercastmedia production.

Photo: UBC

07/28/2026

🎙️ Everyone is talking about free speech. But how did Canada settle the question in 1989?

In this episode of the Shaping Canada podcast, Professor Emeritus Richard Moon from the University of Windsor Faculty of Law examines Irwin Toy and the constitutional framework that still governs every freedom of expression case in Canada.

💬 "There's a temptation to suppress expression. And that's precisely why we have this."

A toy commercial sparked a constitutional question. Quebec banned advertising directed at children under 13. Irwin Toy challenged the law — and the Supreme Court used the opportunity to define what freedom of expression actually protects under Section 2(b) of the Charter.

But broad protection is not unlimited protection: even freedom of expression can be restricted if the reason is sufficiently compelling.

Where do we draw the line? And should an advertisement designed to manipulate children have been considered protected expression in the first place?

🎧 Find out at https://rivercastmedia.com/show/shaping-canada/

This project has been made possible by The governement of Canada
Production : Rivercastmedia


Photo : University of Windsor

05/22/2026

⚖️ Tout juriste connaît l'arrêt Jordan. Mais sa portée se mesure mieux quand on relit la trajectoire complète qui y a mené : Askov (1990) → Morin (1992) → Jordan (2016) → Cody (2017).

Dans ce nouvel épisode du balado Façonner le Canada, nous recevons Me Michel Lebrun, avocat criminaliste, chez LeBrun Provencher avocats pour analyser en profondeur la construction jurisprudentielle de l'article 11b) et l'émergence de ce rôle quasi-législatif de la Cour suprême depuis 1982.

Une lecture rare, livrée par un praticien d'expérience qui a plaidé sous chacun de ces régimes successifs.🎙️

🎧 Écoutez l'épisode ici : https://rivercastmedia.com/show/faconner-le-canada/ (ou sur Apple Podcasts, Spotify et vos plateformes préférées).

Une production Rivercastmedia, rendue possible grâce au gouvernement du Canada.
📸 Crédit photo : Lebrun-Provencher

05/22/2026

🎧Au Canada, aucune loi ne protège le droit à l'avortement.

Et pourtant, ce droit y est mieux protégé que dans bien des pays qui en ont une.

Comment est-ce possible ?

La réponse tient en quatre arrêts de la Cour suprême du Canada, rendus entre 1988 et 1999. Dans le plus récent épisode du balado Façonner le Canada, la professeure Louise Langevin de la faculté de droit de l'Université Laval, nous guide à travers ces décisions et nous explique pourquoi le modèle canadien, bâti sans intervention du législateur, est devenu une référence à une époque où ce droit recule ailleurs dans le monde.

Un épisode sensiblement enrichissant, à écouter sans détour. 🎙️

▶️ faconnerlecanada.ca, Apple Podcasts, Spotify et toutes les plateformes de balados

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