The royal prerogative and parliamentary privilege are generally misunderstood in Canada. When they do arise, it is generally some Canadian senator wrongly stating that the senate has a ‘parliamentary privilege’ to do or not do a particular thing. Senators always get this wrong because of the Senate’s fixation upon reducing every conceivable thought to legislation. Once a thing is reduced to legislation, any privilege or prerogative in that question has been trumped by the introduction of legislation to cover the field.
Ontario recently cancelled electric car subsidies. Rather than a simple cancellation, Ontario provided a transition period. Bureaucracy doing what bureaucracy does best, they left Tesla out of the transition program. So effectively every electric car was omitted from the transition.
Tesla sued. Ontario claimed that the ‘royal prerogative permits it to do cancel a program. The Ontario Superior Court properly said: ‘if you had simply cancelled the program without writing the transition program into legislation, you could have claimed the ‘royal prerogative’’. Instead, as legislatures always do (and do incorrectly): when they want to do something they write legislation; they forget that this action voids any royal prerogative (discretion). Then when challenged, they claim ‘royal prerogative’, then the courts laugh at them for even trying.
