View cases - Stewart McKelvey

[281] The words “listen to” or “read” and “give the association a written acknowledgment”are not ambiguous. This Court’s approach to statutory interpretation has long held that “thewords of an Act are to be read in their entire context and in their grammatical and ordinary senseharmoniously with the scheme of the Act, the object of the Act, and the intention of Parliament”(Rizzo & Rizzo Shoes Ltd. (Re), [1998] 1 S.C.R. 27, at p. 41, citing Elmer Driedger inConstruction of Statutes (2nd ed. 1983)). To say that the words “listen to” or “read” and “give2011 SCC 20 (CanLII)the association a written acknowledgment” are ambiguous would be to ignore the grammaticaland ordinary sense of the words, and the purpose of the AEPA, and would manufactureambiguity where none exists.[282] Professor Sullivan observes that “[i]t is presumed that the ordinary meaning oflegislation is the most appropriate or ‘intended’ meaning” unless there is a reason to reject thatmeaning (Sullivan and Driedger on the Construction of Statutes (4th ed. 2002), at p. 34). AsProfessor Hogg, A. A. Bushell Thornton and W. K. Wright, write in “Charter DialogueRevisited — Or ‘Much Ado About Metaphors’” (2007), 45 Osgoode Hall L.J. 1, at p. 12:A broader general rule, requiring the courts to stretch the plausible interpretation of astatute in order to bring it into conformity with the Charter, “would wrongly upsetthe dialogic balance.” When a statute is unambiguous, courts should give effect tothe clearly expressed legislative intent, even if it leads to the conclusion that thestatute was unconstitutional and should be struck down for breach of the Charter.In this case, there is nothing in the AEPA that suggests that there is a reason to depart from theordinary and grammatical sense of the words.