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

Under s. 1, courts have only rarely questioned the purpose of a law or regulation orfound that it does not meet the rational connection requirement of the proportionality analysis, butthis does not mean that courts will never or should never intervene at these earlier stages. It isgenerally at the minimal impairment and the balancing of effects stages that the means arequestioned and their relationship to the law’s purpose is challenged and reviewed. It is also wherethe purpose itself must be reassessed with regard to the means chosen by Parliament or thelegislature. The proportionality analysis thus depends on a close connection between the final twostages of the Oakes test. The court’s goal is essentially the same at both stages: to strike a properbalance between state action on the one hand, and the preservation of Charter rights and theprotection of rights or interests that may not be guaranteed by the Constitution but that maynevertheless be of high social value or importance on the other. The proportionality analysis reflectsthe need to leave some flexibility to government in respect of the choice of means. But the reviewof those means must also leave the courts with a degree of flexibility in the assessment of the rangeof alternatives that could realize the goal, and also in determining how far the goal ought to beattained in order to achieve the proper balance between the objective of the state and the rights atstake. The stated objective is not an absolute and should not be treated as a given and alternativesolutions should not be evaluated on a standard of maximal consistency with the stated objective.An alternative measure might be legitimate even if the objective could no longer be obtained in itscomplete integrity. A court must assess the objectives, the impugned means and the alternativemeans together, as necessary components of a seamless proportionality analysis. [188] [190-91][195-96] [199]In this case, the Government of Alberta has failed to demonstrate that the regulation is