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

and used to obtain credit or enter into other commercial relationships to the detriment of the otherparties to the transactions. Without the photographs of all licence holders in the photo identificationbank, the assurance of a one-to-one correspondence between individuals and issued licences is lost,and the possibility of driver’s licence-based fraud would be increased.[51] The majority of the Alberta Court of Appeal, while deciding the case on the basis ofminimum impairment, expressed doubt on whether the universal photo requirement for all holdersof driver’s licences is rationally connected to the goal of preserving the integrity and security of thedriver’s licensing system. Conrad J.A. pointed out that many Albertans do not hold driver’s licencesand concluded that the risk flowing from exempting a few hundred Hutterites from the requirementwas “minimal”. These concerns confuse rational connection with proportionality of negative andpositive effects of the measure. The issue at the stage of rational connection is simply whether thereis a rational link between the infringing measure and the government goal. The balance betweenpositive and negative effects of the measure falls to be considered at the final stage of the s. 1analysis.[52] I conclude that the Province has established that the universal photo requirement isrationally related to its goal of protecting the integrity of the driver’s licensing system andpreventing it from being used for purposes of identity theft.(ii) Does the Limit Minimally Impair the Right?[53] The question at this stage of the s.1 proportionality analysis is whether the limit on the