Persona Designata - Criticisms

Criticisms

D M Gordon wrote in the Canadian Bar Review:

"the whole persona designata conception could be scrapped without the slightest inconvenience or the least distortion of legal principles". This view has been upheld numerous times in Canadian Supreme Court decisions. For instance in Re Herman and Dep. A.-G. Can (1978), Chief Justice Larkin stated:

"The concept of persona designata came from the Courts and it can be modified or abolished by the Courts. In my view, I think this Court should declare that whenever a statutory power is conferred upon a Judge or officer of a Court, the power should be deemed exercisable in official capacity as representing the Court unless there is express provision to the contrary. "

and affirmed in Minister of Indian Affairs & Northern Development v. Ranville (1982) where Dickson J. held:

" I was rather of the opinion that this troublesome notion of persona designata had been given its quietus in the recent Herman decision. The Chief Justice's aversion in Herman to the concept of persona designata could not have been more evident (at pp. 4-5 D.L.R., pp. 731-2 S.C.R.):

- it is high time to relieve the Courts of the interpretative exercises that have been common in this country when they think that a decision has to be made whether a statutory jurisdiction has been vested in a Judge qua Judge or as persona designata. -

In the test formulated in Herman I endeavoured to confine the notion of persona designata to the most exceptional circumstances. The Federal Court of Appeal and the provincial courts which have had to deal with the notion since the Herman decision have grasped how exceptional recourse to persona designata must be. So far as I am aware, in applying the test in Herman, no federally-appointed judge has yet been found to be a persona designata"