In Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick and Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Khosa, the Supreme Court of Canada recently re-examined the exercise of judicial review in Canadian administrative law. The author evaluates the impact of these two decisions in light of the motivations that led the Court to modify certain fundamental elements of judicial review. The author begins by assessing the impact of the Dunsmuir decision on procedural fairness, an often ignored aspect of the decision. The. author then presents Dunsmuir's discussion regarding the standard-of-review reform through the concept of deference and its role in administrative law. Finally, the Khosa decision is used to present an analysis of the relationship between the standard of review approach introduced in Dunsmuir, and the standard of review defined in legislative frameworks of judicial review. Such an inquiry allows the author to outline recent developments and to clarify the current state of the law in this complex domain of Canadian administrative law.
