Constitutional Roundtable with Andrew Stobo Sniderman

The David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights’ Constitutional Roundtables are an annual series of lunchtime discussion forums that provide an opportunity to consider developments in Canadian constitutional theory and practice.  The Constitutional Roundtable series promotes scholarship and aims to make a meaningful contribution to intellectual discourse about Canadian constitutional law.

We are pleased to be hosting writer and lawyer Andrew Stobo Sniderman for a Constitutional Roundtable on Tuesday October 21, 2025 at 12h30.

The presentation is titled: Constitutional silence, Section 36 and Unequal Public Services on Indian Reserves

ABSTRACT: Canada’s belated legal reckoning with unequal public services on Indian reserves is only beginning. This article proceeds in two main parts. First, I address a puzzle: even though the problem of deficient services on reserves endured for decades – and, in many respects, endures still – Canadian courts have hardly addressed its constitutionality. This constitutional silence can appear surprising, even astonishing. Second, I suggest that the curiously neglected section 36 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which calls for ‘reasonably comparable services’ and ‘essential public services of reasonable quality to all Canadians,’ should inform the constitutional conversation about unequal services on reserves. The exclusion of reserves from equalization, a principle enshrined in section 36, is a largely-overlooked legal omission that has enabled the problem to fester. Conceiving of section 36’s components as ‘directive principles’ – neither enforceable fundamental rights nor empty political aspirations – helps unlock new possibilities for judicial and political use, particularly in light of the treatment of directive principles in other countries. The language of section 36 has never been explicitly used by a Canadian judge as an interpretive aid. This should change.

BIO:  Andrew Stobo Sniderman is an SJD candidate at Harvard Law School and co-author of Valley of the Birdtail: An Indian Reserve, a White Town, and the Road to Reconciliation (HarperCollins, 2022). He has published in the University of Toronto Law Journal, the Canadian Bar Review, the Ottawa Law Review, and the International Journal of Refugee Law. He has also argued before the Supreme Court of Canada, served as the human rights policy advisor to the Canadian minister of foreign affairs, and clerked for a judge of South Africa’s Constitutional Court.

All are welcome * No RSVP Required * Light lunch provided