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[80] On the other hand, just because the notion of a “true question of jurisdiction or vires” works well at the conceptual level does not mean that it is helpful at the practical everyday level of deciding whether or not the courts are entitled to intervene in a particular administrative decision. On this point, Cromwell J. adopts, at para. 95, the deeply problematic statement by the Dunsmuir majority that jurisdiction should be understood in the “narrow sense of whether or not the tribunal had the authority to . . . decide a particular matter” (Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick, 2008 SCC 9, [2008] 1 S.C.R. 190, at para. 59). As Professor D. Mullan pointed out in “Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick, Standard of Review and Procedural Fairness for Public Servants: Let’s Try Again!” (2008), 21 C.J.A.L.P. 117, at pp. 126-30, this formulation was not narrow but so broad as to risk bringing back from the dead the preliminary question jurisprudence from which Cromwell J. endeavours to dissociate himself, which reached its unfortunate zenith in Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. v. International Union of Operating Engineers, Local 796, [1970] S.C.R. 425, and Bell v. Ontario Human Rights Commission, [1971] S.C.R. 756.
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