Women’s Court of Canada

The Women’s Court of Canada launches this week. (See the story in the Ottawa Citizen.) The WCC is a group of women academics and practitioners who combined to rewrite six Supreme Court of Canada decisions to take a full and proper account of women’s equality. The affected decisions are:

• Symes v. Canada, [1993] 4 S.C.R. 695
  deduction — child care expenses — women — taxpayer — income
• Native Women’s Association of Canada v. Canada, [1994] 3 S.C.R. 627 ((The citation is misprinted in the Majury article referred to below.))
  funding — freedom of expression — women — equal — constitutional
• Eaton v. Brant County Board of Education, [1997] 1 S.C.R. 241
  placement — disabled — special — child — pupil
• Law v. Canada (Minister of Employment and Immigration), [1999] 1 S.C.R. 497
  discrimination — differential treatment — claimant — survivor’s pension — dignity
• Gosselin v. Quebec (Attorney-General), [2002] 4 S.C.R. 429
  programs — welfare recipients — security of the person — dignity — legislation
• Newfoundland (Treasury Board) v. Newfoundland and Labrador Association of Public and Private Employees, [2004] 3 S.C.R. 381
  pay equity — government — crisis — hospital workers — women

The corrected decisions are published in the current edition of the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law. An explanatory article from that issue, “Introducing the Women’s Court of Canada” by Diana Majury is available online in PDF.

There are plans in the works to make all the judgments available free online.