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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Samuel LaSelva has challenged the argument that mandatory retirement is a form of age discrimination and, as such, is unjust and unconstitutional. However, the alternative view that justice requires mandatory retirement seems incompatible with a liberal conception of justice. Moreover, the argument that liberal justice permits mandatory retirement, because of a conflict between rights of different generations, requires a balancing of those rights against one another, and hence against the consequences of their infringement. Such an assessment leads to the conclusion that mandatory retirement is neither constitutional nor just.
Samuel LaSelva met en question l'argument selon lequel la retraite obligatoire constitue une forme de discrimination d'âge et, par conséquent, est injuste et anticonstitutionnelle. Toutefois, le point de vue opposé selon lequel la justice exige la retraite obligatoire semble incompatible avec une conception libérale de la justice. De plus, l'argument selon lequel la justice libérale permet la retraite obligatoire en raison d'un conflit entre les droits des divers générations nécessite un équilibre entre les droits des uns et des autres de même qu'entre les conséquences de leur empiètement. Une telle évaluation mène à la conclusion que la retraite obligatoire est ni constitutionnelle ni juste.
1 LaSelva, Samuel V., “Mandatory Retirement: Intergenerational Justice and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” this JOURNAL 20 (1987), 149–62.Google Scholar
2 Ibid., 150.
3 Ibid., 161.
4 Ibid.
5 I am grateful to my colleague, Ross Rudolph, for pointing out the significance of the weaker claim.
6 LaSelva recognizes that such an appeal weakens the case against abolition (ibid., 161).
7 Ibid., 153.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., 155.
10 This alternative reading of the argument is compatible with the weaker claim (and the stronger argument) that the issue of mandatory retirement reveals a conflict between two protected rights.
11 We can ignore, for the present, the argument that employment is not a resource but a relationship. The dispute is akin to one about whether a job is property. Certainly that issue seems sometimes in dispute between striking workers and strike-breakers. Labour law in most Canadian jurisdictions is ambivalent, in that it both provides protection for the striking workers' right to resume possession of “their”jobs after a strike is over and accepts the possibility that the right to such jobs will simply disappear if a strike is completely broken.
12 Ibid., 157–58.
13 Ibid., 157.
14 LaSelva as much as recognized this fact in a footnote (ibid., 158, note 28), but he did not pursue the promising trail where it reasonably leads.
15 Ontario, Human Rights Code 1981, c. 53, s. 9(a).
16 Gray, J., Re Mandatory Retirement Application, 74.
17 Principally, that of Dickson, , C. J. C, R. v. Oakes, [1986] 1 S.C.R. 138.Google Scholar
18 It will be observed that this consideration, employed in assessing the justifiability of limiting rights, is also of value for assessing the justice of what I have called the weaker claim.
19 Gray, J., Re Mandatory Retirement Application, 51.
20 Ontario, Legislative Assembly, Debates, May 25, 1981, 959, quoted at page 54 of Mr. Justice Gray's judgment.
21 Gray, J., Re Mandatory Retirement Application, 56.
22 Of course, one could design a more complicated experiment, in which several jurisdictions varied in the degree of protection provided, but the problem of social experimentation is difficult enough without having to seek multiple matched cases.
23 The process, which incidentally predated the proclamation of the Charter's anti-discrimination provisions, is detailed in Flanagan, Thomas, “Policy-making by Exegesis: The Abolition of ‘Mandatory Retirement’ in Manitoba,” Canadian Public Policy 11 (1985), 40–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
24 LaSelva, “Mandatory Retirement,” 162.