Institute for Migrant Rights
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Migration Jurisprudence from the South › Canada

Andrews v. Law Society of British Columbia

Supreme Court of Canada · Canada · 1989-02-02 · National court

Citation: [1989] 1 SCR 143
Type of case: Constitutional and human rights
Outcome: Decided for the migrant side

Question

May a profession be closed to permanent residents who are not citizens?

What the court decided

No. Citizenship is an analogous ground under section 15, and the citizenship requirement for lawyers was unjustified discrimination.

In plain language

A British lawyer living permanently in Canada was barred from practising law because he was not a citizen. The Supreme Court said this was discrimination.

Dalam bahasa sederhana

Seorang pengacara Inggris yang tinggal tetap di Kanada dilarang berpraktik karena bukan warga negara. MA menyatakan ini diskriminasi.

Pertanyaan: Bolehkah suatu profesi ditutup bagi penduduk tetap yang bukan warga negara?

What happened afterwards

  • 1989-02-02: Judgment.

Sources

Open this decision in the interactive collection (compare, filter, Indonesian view, downloads).

Cite as: Institute for Migrant Rights (2026), Migration Jurisprudence from the South, version 0.1, https://theimr.org/court-decisions/d/ca-andrews-1989/. This page summarizes a court decision for research and advocacy; it is not legal advice.

For researchers

This collection of decisions is built for empirical legal scholarship and socio-legal research on migration and the rights of migrant workers, as well as for advocacy.

The coded variables support statistical analysis in law: cross-national comparison, regression and event-history designs, and law and economics questions such as how recruitment fees, wage protection and limits on changing employer affect migrant workers. The data can be downloaded for replication.

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