Corbiere v Canada

Question 1

What is the issue in this case?

Answer 1

Whether the exclusion of off reserve members from the right to vote in band elections is discriminatory

Question 2

What is the reason for using enumerated or analogous grounds as a threshold to determining whether there is discrimination?

Answer 2

Analogous grounds serve as jurisprudential markers for suspect disctinctions

Question 3

What are the criteria used to identify a ground of distinction as analogous?

Answer 3

• personal characteristic that is immutable or changeable only at unnacceptable cost to personal identity
• grounds based on characteristics that the government has no legitimate interest in expecting to change to receive equal treatment under the law
• impacts on a discrete and insular minority or a group that has been historically discriminated against.

Question 4

How do the disctinctions impact this group specifically?

Answer 4

The reserve belongs to the band and their children
- the band council represents them, and complete denial to off reserve members to vote treats them as less worthy, not on the merits of their situation, but simply because they live off reserve

Question 5

What was the ruling in this case?

Answer 5

That s77(1) disenfranchisement is discriminatory, because it denied off reserve members the right to participate fully in band governance on the arbitrary basis of a personal characteristic. The majority found that discrimination under s15 occured, and it was not justifiable under section 1.