Quasi-Judicial

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Date Retrieved:	2025-04-01
CLNP Page ID:	2483
Page Categories:	[Legal Principles]
Citation:	Quasi-Judicial, CLNP 2483, <https://rvt.link/fb>, retrieved on 2025-04-01
Editor:	Sharvey
Last Updated:	2025/03/06

Blais v. Basford, 1972 CanLII 2193 (FCA), [1972] 1 FC 151

If the problem which we have to decide were the same as that decided in the cases men-tioned, that is to say, whether the powers of the Minister under sections 9(3) and 9(4) of the Bankruptcy Act are administrative or judicial, I know of no sound answer that could be given to Mr. 011ivier's contention. But to my mind, as I have already indicated, the problem is not the same. It is whether these powers, even though administrative, are required by law to be exer­cised on a judicial or quasi-judicial basis. It must I think be borne in mind that section 28 of the Federal Court Act is new legislation which confers a heretofore unknown and non-existent right of review, broader than was formerly available by Crown writ procedures and defined as applying to all decisions of federal boards, commissions or tribunals excepting those deci­sions embraced within the meaning of what, so far as I am aware, is a newly defined group or class of decisions that is to say "decisions or orders of an administrative nature not required to be made on a judicial or quasi-judicial basis".

What this appears to me to mean is that any purely administrative decision, such as, for example, a decision of a Minister that an automobile should be purchased for his depart-ment, is not reviewable, but that wherever the administrative decision is required by law— which includes the common law, the justice of which will supply the omission of the legislature (vide Byles J. in Cooper v. Wandsworth Board of Works (1863) 14 C.B.N.S. 180)—to be made on a judicial or a quasi-judicial basis the deci­sion is reviewable. As to what a "judicial or quasi-judicial basis" means in this context the nearest expression which I have found in the jurisprudence cited is that of Davis J. in St. John v. Fraser [1935] S.C.R. 441, a case which was cited along with Board of Education v. Rice by Hall J. in Wiswell v. Winnipeg [1965] S.C.R. 512 at page 522. In the St. John case Davis J. said at page 451:

Assuming then in favour of the appellants that the prohibitory section does not apply in this case, the real issue on the merits is whether or not the plaintiffs were entitled as of right to be afforded freedom of cross-examination of each and every witness called by the investigator. Counsel for the appellants says that such a right is founded upon what he terms "natural justice," "essential justice" or "Brit-ish justice". Such phrases are rather loose and vague terms. The rights of the parties must be determined upon the basis of what they are entitled to according to law. A decision in accordance with the law is justice. Lord Shaw of Dunfermline said in Local Government Board v. Arlidge ([1915] A.C. 120 at page 138):

In so far as the term "natural justice" means that a result or process should be just it is a harmless though it may be a high-sounding expression; in so far as it attempts to reflect the old jus naturale it is a confused and unwarrant­ed transfer into the ethical sphere of a term employed for other distinctions ....