View cases - Stewart McKelvey

Page: 18impaired the relevant right as little as possible, in light of the government's pressing and substantialobjectives: at para. 123, emphasis added.[69] In addressing this question, Justice La Forest described the issue of mandatory retirement asbeing a complex socio-economic one, which involved “the basic and interconnected rules of theworkplace throughout the whole of our society”: at para. 96. He explained that mandatoryretirement was part of “a complex, interrelated, lifetime contractual arrangement involvingsomething like deferred compensation”, particularly in union-organized workplaces, where2011 FC 120 (CanLII)“seniority serves as something of a functional equivalent to tenure”: at para. 108.[70] Justice La Forest further observed that the ramifications that the abolition of mandatoryretirement would have for the organization of the workplace, and for society in general, were thingsthat could not readily be measured: at para. 104.[71] Finally, Justice La Forest found that there was proportionality between the effects ofsubsection 9(a) of the Code on the guaranteed right, and the objectives of the provision. Heobserved that a Legislature is not obliged to deal with all aspects of a problem at once, and that itshould be permitted to take incremental measures in relation to issues such as mandatory retirement:at para. 129.[72] Justices Cory and Sopinka agreed in their concurring reasons that subsection 9(a) of theCode was saved under section 1 of the Charter.