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View cases - Stewart McKelvey

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the Charter, to a consideration of what activities the courts believe are normatively andsubjectively more important. The result of the approach in Health Services was that the goal ofemployee associations — imposing the obligation of collective bargaining on employers — isconstitutionally entrenched, while the goals of other associations were not. It is difficult to seehow this result can be anything other than a judicial endorsement of the importance of collectivebargaining over other unconstitutionalized associational activities.2011 SCC 20 (CanLII)[215] A content-neutral approach does not allow for constitutional protection of collectivebargaining and no constitutional protection of the aims and objects of other associations. Shortof protecting all aims and objects of associations, s. 2(d) cannot be interpreted in a fashion whichis neutral as between different associations while imposing a duty of collective bargaining onemployers and groups of employees.(4) Section 2(d) Does Not Give Constitutional Status to Contracts[216] A fourth difficulty with the collective bargaining right in Health Services is that itplaces contracts above statutes in the traditional hierarchy of laws. Although Health Servicespurported to constitutionalize the process of collective bargaining rather than its fruits, it in factgranted constitutional protection to the collective agreements on the basis that they were thefruits of that process. In Health Services, the challenged legislation had the effect of invalidatingportions of existing collective agreements and consequently “undermining the past bargainingprocesses that formed the basis for these agreements”: Health Services, at para. 113. This wasfound to violate s. 2(d) (para. 136).

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