View cases - Stewart McKelvey

process. The focus shifted in Health Services from protecting the right to associate to enhancingthe goals of the association. This was an express break from Dunmore.B. The Jurisprudential Background Prior to Health Services[157] This Court first examined the scope of the Charter’s guarantee of freedom ofassociation in a series of three cases that came to be known as the “labour law trilogy”2011 SCC 20 (CanLII)(“Trilogy”) Reference Re Public Service Employee Relations Act (Alta.), [1987] 1 S.C.R. 313(the “Alberta Reference”); PSAC v. Canada, [1987] 1 S.C.R. 424; and RWDSU v. Saskatchewan,[1987] 1 S.C.R. 460. The specific issue in those cases was whether s. 2(d) protected the right tostrike. However, the members of the Court took the opportunity to consider, at length, thepurpose and scope of the protections afforded by s. 2(d). The bulk of the substantive analysis isfound in the Alberta Reference.[158] While the Court was divided on the result in those cases, there was nonethelessagreement on a number of core principles concerning the purpose and scope of s. 2(d). Withrespect to the purpose of granting constitutional protection to freedom of association, thefollowing comment by McIntyre J. reflects a general consensus amongst the members of theCourt:While freedom of association like most other fundamental rights has no singlepurpose or value, at its core rests a rather simple proposition: the attainment ofindividual goals, through the exercise of individual rights, is generally impossiblewithout the aid and cooperation of others. “Man, as Aristotle observed, is a ‘socialanimal, formed by nature for living with others’, associating with his fellows both tosatisfy his desire for social intercourse and to realize common purposes.” [p. 395]