|
Public Policy - General. The Ontario Health Coalition v. Ontario (Minister of Long-Term Care)
In The Ontario Health Coalition v. Ontario (Minister of Long-Term Care) (Ont Divisional Ct, 2025) the Divisional Court dismissed a JR, this from "the June 14, 2023 decision of the Minister of Long-Term Care (the “Minister”) to approve funding and undertake to issue a licence for a new 320 bed long-term care home in Pickering, Ontario".
Here the court generally consider 'public interest' as a public policy concept:[93] The balance between not-for-profit and for-profit long-term care is a controversial policy issue on which reasonable people may disagree. The legislation does not impose any particular result, but leaves that determination to the Minister. Assuming that Dr. Armstrong’s expertise is relevant to the legal issues in this case, it is not surprising that the Applicants were able to find an expert who disagrees with the Minister’s and Director’s decisions and who would have preferred a different outcome. That does not, however, make the Minister’s decision unreasonable. There is nothing in the legislation that precludes for-profit long-term care homes, and certainly nothing in the relevant statutory provisions that would require the result preferred by Dr. Armstrong and the Applicants.
[94] The Minister’s decision in this matter was very much the kind of broad public interest policy decision described the Federal Court of Appeal in Entertainment Software Association v. Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada, 2020 FCA 100, at para. 28:Public interest determinations based on wide considerations of policy and public interest, assessed on polycentric, subjective or indistinct criteria and shaped by the administrative decision makers’ view of economics, cultural considerations and the broader public interest—decisions that are sometimes characterized as quintessentially executive in nature—are very much unconstrained.
|
