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Fairness - Adjudicative. Afolabi v. Law Society of Ontario
In Afolabi v. Law Society of Ontario (Ont CA, 2025) the Ontario Court of Appeal dismissed a motion, here seeking "an extension of time to perfect a cross-appeal against a decision of the Divisional Court, which was appealed successfully by the Law Society of Ontario (LSO)".
Here the court noted the earlier appeal decision that "the LSO’s decision to cancel the candidates’ licensing applications was administrative in nature", as opposed to adjudicative:[2] The facts giving rise to this dispute are uncontested and canvassed in detail in this court’s two prior decisions on the matter. I address them only as necessary to respond to the parties’ submissions. In short, following a security breach in the LSO’s licensing exams, numerous candidates were told that their exam results were deemed to be void and that their registrations in the LSO’s lawyer licensing process were also void. This meant they had to start the entire process again, which meant rewriting all prior exams and repeating articles of clerkship or other experiential training. The moving party’s tainted barrister exam result was voided, but unlike the other applicants, her registration in the licensing program was not deemed to be void and she did not have to re-start the process.
[3] In the main appeal, this court concluded that the LSO’s decision to cancel the candidates’ licensing applications was administrative in nature. This meant that fewer procedural guarantees were required under the framework established in Baker v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 1999 CanLII 699 (SCC), [1999] 2 S.C.R. 817 than if the decision was adjudicative in nature. Accordingly, this court held that the Divisional Court erred in concluding that the candidates were entitled to an oral hearing, and concluded that LSO’s decision to void the candidates’ licensing applications without one was procedurally fair: 2025 ONCA 257, at paras. 102-6.
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