SUPREME COURT OF CANADA CITATION: Alberta v. Hutterian ...

connected to the goal of preserving the integrity of the driver’s licensing system by minimizing therisk of identity theft through the illicit use of driver’s licences. To establish a rational connection,the government “must show a causal connection between the infringement and the benefit soughton the basis of reason or logic”: RJR- MacDonald Inc. v. Canada (Attorney General), [1995] 3S.C.R. 199, at para. 153. The rational connection requirement is aimed at preventing limits beingimposed on rights arbitrarily. The government must show that it is reasonable to suppose that thelimit may further the goal, not that it will do so.[49] The government argues that a universal system of photo identification for drivers willbe more effective in preventing identity theft than a system that grants exemptions to people whoobject to photos being taken on religious grounds. The affidavit evidence filed by the governmentsupports this view.[50] Alberta’s evidence demonstrates the ways in which the existence of an exemption fromthe photo requirement would increase the vulnerability of the licensing system and the risk ofidentity-related fraud. As Mr. Joseph Mark Pendleton, Director of the Special Investigations Unitof the Alberta Ministry of Government Services, put it in his affidavit supporting Alberta’s position,“[o]pportunities for fraud are as numerous as criminals are clever and resourceful.” The existenceof non-photo licences in the system raises the possibility that a person could hold multiple licencesin different names, as long as no more than one of them was a regular photographic licence. Asstated by Alberta, “each licensee whose photo is not entered in our database creates an opportunityfor impersonation by wrongdoers, because that person’s licence can be renewed or replaced by awrongdoer without being detected by [facial recognition]”. A non-photo licence can be obtained