R. v. CONWAY - British Columbia Review Board

and tribunals acting under specific statutory schemes are courts of competent jurisdiction to grant
particular remedies under s. 24(1).
[25] The early cases considered the remedial jurisdiction of statutory and superior courts.
In Mills and Carter, this Court held that a provincial court judge sitting as a preliminary inquiry
court was not a court of competent jurisdiction for the purpose of ordering a stay of proceedings for
an alleged s. 11(b) violation. The following year, this Court concluded that extradition judges had
the same institutional features as preliminary inquiry judges, and could therefore not order a stay
in the event of a Charter breach (Mellino; Allard). Further, in Mellino, the Court observed that since
extradition proceedings were reviewable by superior courts by way of habeas corpus, those superior
courts were the courts of competent jurisdiction to grant a stay under s. 24(1), not the extradition
judge.
[26] In 1988, in Gamble, the Court held that a superior court in the province where an
individual is in custody is a court of competent jurisdiction to hear an application for habeas corpus,
stating:
Where the courts of Ontario have jurisdiction over the subject matter and the person, it
seems to me that they may, under the broad provisions of s. 24(1) of the Charter, grant
such relief as it is within their jurisdiction to grant and as they consider appropriate and
just in the circumstances. [p. 631]
[27] In 1995, in Weber, the Court expanded the scope of the Mills inquiry to cover
administrative tribunals. The issue was whether a labour arbitrator appointed under the Labour
Relations Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. L.2, was a court of competent jurisdiction for the purpose of granting