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View cases - Stewart McKelvey

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(d) The Issue on This Appeal[44] Against this background, we return to the issue in this case. The Court of Appealheld that Health Services constitutionalizes a full-blown Wagner system of collective bargaining,and concluded that since the AEPA did not provide such a model, absent s. 1 justification, it isunconstitutional. The court appears to have understood the affirmation of the right to collectivebargaining in Health Services as an affirmation of a particular type of collective bargaining, the2011 SCC 20 (CanLII)Wagner model which is dominant in Canada.[45] With respect, this overstates the ambit of the s. 2(d) right as described in HealthServices. First, as discussed, the majority in Health Services unequivocally stated that s. 2(d)does not guarantee a particular model of collective bargaining or a particular outcome (para. 91).[46] Second, and more fundamentally, the logic of Dunmore and Health Services is atodds with the view that s. 2(d) protects a particular kind of collective bargaining. As discussedearlier, what s. 2(d) protects is the right to associate to achieve collective goals. Laws orgovernment action that make it impossible to achieve collective goals have the effect of limitingfreedom of association, by making it pointless. It is in this derivative sense that s. 2(d) protects aright to collective bargaining: see Ontario (Public Safety and Security) v. Criminal Lawyers’Association, 2010 SCC 23, [2010] 1 S.C.R. 815 (“CLA”), where the right to access governmentinformation was held to be “a derivative right which may arise where it is a necessaryprecondition of meaningful expression on the functioning of government” (para. 30). However,no particular type of bargaining is protected. In every case, the question is whether the

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