David Stratas

Mr. Justice Stratas was educated at Queen's University, earning an LL.B. in 1984 and Oxford University, earning a B.C.L. in 1986. He then returned to Canada and clerked for Justice Bertha Wilson of the Supreme Court of Canada. He proceeded to practise law as a litigator at Toronto law firms, including Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt and Heenan Blaikie.

While practising law, Justice Stratas earned a reputation as one of the best counsel in Canada. The Chambers Global Guide described him as a "tremendously hard worker," "meticulously prepared" and "a creative force," with "ideas you'd never think of." The annual Lexpert Survey consistently rated him as "repeatedly recommended" by other counsel. Up until his appointment to the judiciary, he appeared in every edition of The Best Lawyers in Canada.[1]

In 2008, Justice Stratas was inducted as a Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers, one of a select number of Canadian counsel to receive that honour. In that same year, the federal Minister of Justice appointed him as a Special Advocate, a lawyer who, upon court appointment, acts independently of government to protect the interests of persons facing allegations in closed national security proceedings.[1]

Before his appointment directly to the Federal Court of Appeal, Justice Stratas published over 110 conference papers and articles. From 1994 until his appointment to the bench in 2009, he served as an adjunct professor at Queen's Law School, winning eight teaching awards. He continues to serve as an adjunct professor, teaching a course in legal writing and written advocacy.[2]

He continues to speak and present papers at conferences on topics such as administrative law, regulatory law and legal writing, with over 200 conference papers to his name.[3]

He has been particularly active in judicial teaching under the auspices of the National Judicial Institute and the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice; for example, since 2001, he has lectured every new superior court judge on the topic of administrative law.[3] As a service to the judiciary, the legal profession and self-represented litigants, he maintains a regularly updated paper on administrative law.[4]

In 2011, the Society of Ontario Adjudicators and Regulators awarded Justice Stratas its SOAR Medal for "consistent outstanding service and achievement" and "exceptional leadership dedicated to advancing excellence in the field of administrative justice above and beyond the successful completion of day-to-day responsibilities."[5]

In June 2012, Justice Stratas received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Queen's University.[6]

Justice Stratas has been a "much admired" jurist[7] and is "one of the most influential judges sitting on an intermediate appellate court".[8]

In August 2015, Canadian Lawyer magazine named Justice Stratas one of the top 25 most influential players in Canadian law. This was based on a survey in June 2015 in which 9,105 people participated and commented on those who they thought made their mark over the last 18 months.[9] Among other things, survey respondents described him as "the greatest administrative law jurist of our age," "the only one going deep into doctrine, making sense of it all," "thoughtful, scholarly, practical, and so hard working," and the author of "plain speaking decisions" that "have a real impact" and "hammer the important points home."[10] He has also been described as "a sparkling writer" with an "engaging personality" and a "constitutional expert with...a prodigious work ethic and an encyclopedic knowledge of the law."[11]

Justice Stratas is known for his commitment to legal doctrine and its development and is increasingly critical of judicial approaches based on personal preferences and ideologies,[12] stressing that judges are "just lawyers who happen to hold a judicial commission" without the huge budgets policymakers have, and are not "high priests who can arbitrate values, judge what is 'just', 'right' and 'fair' and give benediction to their personal beliefs".[13] In a conference speech, he stressed the unsuitability of largely well-off lawyers to "do justice and be fair and do what you think personally is best".[14] He has expressed these concerns in jurisprudence starting in Canada v. Ishaq, 2015 FCA 151.[15]

He has been especially insistent on objective, doctrinal approaches to statutory interpretation in cases such as Williams v. Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness), 2017 FCA 252,[16] Canada v. Cheema, 2018 FCA 45[17] and Hillier v. Canada (Attorney General), 2019 FCA 44[18] and has been outspoken against interpretive approaches that ignore legislative language and insert judicial preferences into legislation.[19] Similarly, he has opposed the careless, unrestricted use of international law in the interpretation of legislation, setting out precisely where it is relevant to the analysis.[20] He once observed that "international law is not like a series of tasty plates on a buffet table from which we can take whatever we like and eat whatever we please".[21] He has criticized the liberal, unrestricted approach of some courts to intervention[22] and some judges who make political pronouncements in public, suggesting that these have encouraged some to deal with Canadian courts as political bodies that welcome policy submissions divorced from law.[23]

Nevertheless, when warranted, he will extend doctrine when underlying principles exemplified by the case law require it. His decision in Paradis Honey v. Canada, 2015 FCA 89[24] where he created a new public law liability tort and his expansion of the mandamus remedy for administrative malfeasance in cases like D'Errico v. Canada (Attorney General), 2014 FCA 95[25] and Canada (Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness) v. LeBon, 2013 FCA 55[26] are examples of this.

Although a sitting judge, Justice Stratas was very outspoken in his criticism of the Supreme Court of Canada's leading administrative law decision, Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick.[27] Among other things, he published an article sharply critical of the Dunsmuir decision and subsequent Supreme Court treatments of it, an article downloaded nearly 5,000 times.[28] The Supreme Court later replaced Dunsmuir with Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v Vavilov.[29] Justice Stratas was "one of the major intellectual influences on Vavilov",[30] as was shown by the Supreme Court's adoption of a number of Justice Stratas' decisions, especially those adopting a contextual approach to the intensity of review of administrative decisions.

Justice Stratas is also sharply critical of the Supreme Court's tendency to restrict the jurisdiction and powers of the Federal Courts, noting that the Federal Courts are a necessary bulwark against the powers of the federal executive.[31]

In 2020, Canadian Lawyer magazine again recognized him as one of the 25 most influential players in Canadian law, noting his overall influence at the intermediate appellate level, his intellectual contribution to the reform of the Canadian law of judicial review and the impact of his teaching of legal writing at Queen's University law school.[32] He was the only Canadian judge so named.