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L EGAL REPORT: LABOUR & EMP LOYMENT Labour rights hang on supreme Court ruling in Fraser BY MARK CARDWELL involving the country's humblest work- ers. If and when the decision does come, it will bring relief to the many labour experts who have been wait- ing as eagerly as teenagers anticipating the launch of the next iPod. "I think it may be the most important case in Canadian labour law in a century," says Roy J. Adams, professor emeri- tus of industrial relations at McMaster University and the Ariel F. Sallows Chair of Human Rights at the University of Saskatchewan's College of Law. "The implications are absolutely huge." B y the time you read this, the high- est court in the land may have already ruled on a landmark case The case — Fraser v. Ontario (Attorney General) — concerns the freedom of association rights of agricultural work- ers in Canada's most populous prov- ince. On Dec. 17, 2009, the Supreme Court of Canada heard the appeal of a 2008 Ontario Court of Appeal ruling that declared the province's Agricultural Employees Protection Act unconstitu- tional because it contravened the right to collective bargaining as found in s. 2(d) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Many labour law experts believe the Supreme Court's pending decision will cut the Gordian knot the highest court itself has helped to cre- ate in recent years through a series of rulings that have broadened both the collective rights of all workers — both private and public — and the obliga- tion on governments across Canada to protect those rights. "The question now is whether the court's much-anticipated decision in the Fraser appeal will put a stop to some of the more free-wheeling applications of s. 2(d) or whether the labour landscape will soon look like a moonscape, pockmarked with tiny craters where offending statutory pro- visions used to be," Calgary labour relations and employment lawyer Bill Armstrong said in a recent speech to the Western Cities Conference in Lethbridge, Alta. www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com NO VEMBER / DECEMBER 2010 45 JOE WEISSMANN