Canada: Family Law at the Supreme Court of Canada

Summary

Résumé

Le Canada est un véritable laboratoire de droit comparé en raison, d’une part, de la cohabitation des traditions juridiques de common law, de droit civil et de droit autochtone et, d’autre part, de la présence de ses deux langues officielles et de nombreuses langues aborigènes. Les juges de la Cour suprême doivent être capables d’entendre des affaires en français et en anglais, de fonctionner dans les systèmes de common law et de droit civil et de participer au mouvement d’intégration des traditions juridiques et des tribunaux autochtones dans le cadre juridique canadien contemporain. Les dossiers de droit familial dont a été saisie la Cour suprême en 2019 offrent des exemples de la variété des aptitudes exigées des magistrats.

INTRODUCTION

As Canada's highest court, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) hears appeals from the country's ten provinces and three territories. In most cases, leave to appeal is required. The SCC has broad discretion to grant leave, and generally does so only if the case raises a question of public importance or an important issue of law that warrants consideration by the SCC. The SCC hears only about 65–80 appeals each year, and of about 500–600 applications for leave to appeal, only about 50 are granted.

It difficult, then, to get leave to appeal, and for many the expense is prohibitive. After proceedings at the court of first instance and the first level of appeal in a province or territory, few parties can afford to pursue a further appeal to the SCC. The expense of family litigation prevents many parties from even hiring a lawyer for their initial hearing. The high percentage of self-represented litigants in family courts is a matter of general concern in Canada. Many of the family law cases that are pursued to the level of the SCC involve parties with substantial assets, and that is true of the three cases discussed here that came before the SCC in 2019.

The first case, Beaver v. Hill, raises important questions as to the recognition and role of Indigenous tribunals and laws for family law disputes, as well as the relationship between any such tribunals and laws on one hand and the provincial court systems and family law regimes on the other.