COURT OF APPEAL FOR ONTARIO DEMOCRACY WATCH - and -

Both the Decision to Quash and the Decision to Uphold made the same errors as did the decision denying the CCD public interest standing in MacLaren: failure to apply the test for public interest standing in the required flexible manner in order to ensure an avenue for challenging state action in court and upholding the rule of law. [...] The Applications concern the reasonableness of the OIC’s interpretation of the key conflict-of-interest provisions in the LRA, the reasonableness of the OIC’s exercise of - 16 - discretion in no. [...] The Decision to Quash claimed, incorrectly, that Democracy Watch was granted standing by the FC in Democracy Watch (2021-1) to judicially review the rulings by the Federal Commissioner only with respect to the definition of the word “staff” in Rule 9 of the Lobbyists’ Code of Conduct (the “Code”) pursuant to the Lobbying Act. [...] These six Applications are based on the fact that the OIC decided in 2019–20 not to penalize the six lobbyists involved, even though they violated the LRA in the same or in an equally serious manner (and with the same mitigating circumstances) as did the one lobbyist the OIC decided to penalize in 2019–20, and the three lobbyists the OIC penalized in decisions issued in 2018–19. [...] The Divisional Court further erred on this point by failing to consider FC and FCA rulings that all allowed Democracy Watch to pursue judicial review of several final decisions by the federal Registrar of Lobbyists (one of the roles at the time of the federal Ethics Counsellor) and the Federal Commissioner—final decisions that are highly analogous to the nine impugned decisions of the OIC.