Delisle v. Canada

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Delisle v. Canada (Deputy Attorney General)

Hearing: October 7, 1998
Judgment: September 2, 1999


Full case name:	Gaétan Delisle v. The Attorney General of Canada
Citations:	[1999] 2 S.C.R. 989
Docket No.:	25926 [1]
Ruling:	Delisle appeal dismissed

Court membership

Chief Justice: Antonio Lamer
Puisne Justices: Claire L'Heureux-Dubé, Charles Gonthier, Peter Cory, Beverley McLachlin, Frank Iacobucci, John C. Major, Michel Bastarache, Ian Binnie

Reasons given

Majority by: Bastarache J.
Joined by: Gonthier, McLachlin and Major JJ.
Concurrence by: L’Heureux-Dubé J.
Dissent by: Cory and Iacobucci JJ.

Delisle v. Canada (Deputy Attorney General), [1999] 2 S.C.R. 989 is a leading Supreme Court of Canada decision on the freedom of association guarantee under section 2(d) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Court defined the freedom as only applying to individuals and not associations themselves. Accordingly, they found that the exclusion of the RCMP from the public services legislation did not violate section 2(d).

Gaétan Delisle was a member of the RCMP and president of a RCMP labour association. He brought a challenge to the federal Public Service Staff Relations Act (PSSRA) and part of the Canada Labour Code on the grounds that it violated his right to association.

Justice Bastarache, writing for the majority, that the PSSRA did not violate the Charter as it did not affect members of the RCMP from forming their own independent associations. He further ruled that "[t]he fundamental freedoms protected by s. 2 of the Charter do not impose a positive obligation of protection or inclusion on Parliament or the government, except perhaps in exceptional circumstances which are not at issue here."^[1]

In the