Sandy Bell's natural garden
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A Toronto musician decided that she wanted her front yard to become once again a small stretch of original Ontario meadow, with native grasses and flowers serving as a home for butterflies, bees and birds, and as an environmental educational experience for her young son and for passersby. But the City said her natural garden violated the Toronto lawn by-law, fined her and ordered her to cut it down. We went to court for her, saying that she was expressing her fundamental environmental beliefs and that the by-law violated her Charter right to do so. The Court agreed and declared the by-law void, saying that the statement made by her garden about living in harmony with nature was close to the core values underlying s. 2(b) of the Charter. Toronto was forced to amend its by-law to allow natural gardens.
The case is
reported in the Canadian Rights Reporter (at 39 C.R.R. (2d) 152),
highlighted in Lorraine Johnson's The New Ontario Naturalized Garden:
The Complete Guide to Using Native Plants, and was featured on national
television news.
The Mushkegowuk Cree fight Workfare
When
the provincial government dramatically cut back provincial social
assistance, First Nations people across the province were especially
hardhit. The Mushkegowuk Council of First Nations on the James Bay
coast asked us to challenge the province's imposition of the changes on
First Nations. Using an innovative division of powers approach, the
Mushkegowuk Council obtained a court order declaring that the province
could not override First Nations' right of self-government and impose
workfare. The province appealed but the Court of Appeal upheld the
result. Reluctantly at first, and eventually with serious effort, the
federal government entered into province-wide negotiations towards a
new bilateral federal/First Nation social assistance regime, marking a
reversal of decades of "assimilation by municipalization" of First
Nations in the field of social assistance.