(UPDATE) Apparently there was an issue with respect to who was a party to the litigation and which lawyers could make submissions on the appeal. One of the litigants has died and another decided against proceeding. So the issue was who should be there to make submissions.
We have now been told that the matter is set to proceed on Tuesday March 19, 2013.
As we indicated in our earlier post, there are so many legal issues in the IRP scheme (go back and read our blog for details) that it’s a mess to sort out.
The appeal of the scheme was set to start today in the BC Court of Appeal. However, the entire case has now been adjourned by the Court on its own initiative. This happens. It’s relatively rare. There have been changes concerning who are litigants and who should be responsible for making certain arguments. The BC Civil Liberties Association wasn’t involved in the original case before the BC Supreme Court but they are speaking to the appeal. You can read the BCCLA argument here.
The problem can be that the lawyers are unclear with respect to what legal issues are to be decided. As you can discern from our many blog posts, the thing is a mess. There are the legal issues with respect to who has the authority to create such legislation, there are the issues with respect to the Charter of Rights and then there are the many failings of the scheme itself.
The word on the street is that, if the lawyers handling the IRP appeal can narrow things, they may get on tomorrow to start arguments.
So the one thing that comes from today is that nothing has been decided and it could be some time before any of these issues are sorted out.