Simon's Legal Resources

JR - SOR - Vavilov is Starting Point

. Auer v. Auer

In Auer v. Auer (SCC, 2024) the Supreme Court of Canada dismissed an appeal of a JR, here challenging the Federal Child Support Guidelines as ultra vires their Governor-in-Counsel-delegated Divorce Act authority.

Here the court considers the central role of the Vavilov (SCC, 2019) case in determining the SOR for future JR cases:

A. Vavilov Is the Starting Point for Determining the Appropriate Standard of Review

[19] Vavilov represented a “recalibration of the governing approach to the choice of standard of review analysis and a clarification of the proper application of the reasonableness standard” (para. 143). It “set out a holistic revision of the framework for determining the applicable standard of review” when conducting a substantive review of an administrative decision (ibid.). Our Court explained that Vavilov is the starting point: “A court seeking to determine what standard is appropriate in a case before it should look to these reasons first in order to determine how this general framework applies to that case” (ibid.).