INTRODUCTION

Webber Academy (or “the school”), a private educational institution in Alberta, defined itself as non-denominational: it did not engage in any overt religious practice (with one possible and qualified exception). Yet, after two Alberta Human Rights Commission (AHRC) decisions, two Queen’s Bench (as it then was) (QB) judgements, two Court of Appeal (CA) rulings and two denial of leaves to appeal by the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC), it was held to have discriminated without justification against two Muslim students whom it prohibited from engaging, on school property, in overt prayers. How did this happen? And what does it . . . [more]

Written by Daniel Standing, LL.B., Content Editor, First Reference Inc.

The Supreme Court of British Columbia rendered a decision (2024 BCSC 55 (CanLII)) on judicial review which looked at the employer’s choice to implement a COVID-19 vaccination policy, and whether, under the Labour Relations Code, it was obligated to enter into discussions with the union first. The case provides employers with insight into the difficulty of overturning a tribunal’s decision. . . . [more]

For those of us raised in Canada and who studied law here, it can be easy to forget that the way we practise law is very… Canadian.

While we’re all aware that there are substantive differences between Canadian law and the law of other jurisdictions, it’s much easier to forget that the practice of law varies just as much from nation to nation. There’s more than one way to do almost anything, and the Canadian legal system is founded on a very specific set of choices, norms, and traditions.

Upon arriving in Canada from her native Australia, and despite her . . . [more]

In R. v. Spencer^[1] the Supreme Court of Canada held that a reasonable expectation of privacy attaches to subscriber information — the name, address, and contact information — associated with an individual Internet Protocol (IP) address. In R. v. Bykovets^[2], the majority found that reasonable expectation of privacy extends to the numbers which make up an Internet protocol address even though those numbers might be changed at random by an Internet service provider.

The Facts

The Calgary City Police were investigating fraud in online liquor sales and came across a payment processor who processed the suspect transactions. . . . [more]

In the 1920s, Jackie Coogan became one of Hollywood’s first child stars after playing the titular role of “The Kid” alongside Charlie Chaplin. Having starred in several box office successes, Coogan’s childhood career had earned him an estimated $4 million (roughly $62 million today). When Coogan tried to access his earnings in his 20’s, however, he discovered that his mother had spent nearly his entire fortune. In response to public outcry, California passed the Coogan Act, which aimed to safeguard a portion of child actors’ earnings until they reached adulthood and to protect them from abuse and exploitation. The Coogan . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : Dans le cadre de l’affaire du meurtre de Guylaine Potvin, le tribunal déclare recevable le témoignage d’une biologiste judiciaire à titre de témoin expert concernant l’utilisation du nouvel outil d’enquête désigné comme le «Projet PatronYme» et ses résultats.

Intitulé : R. c. Grenon, 2024 QCCS 551
Juridiction . . . [more]

Written by Christina Catenacci, BA, LLB, LLM, PhD, Content Editor, First Reference Inc.

In January 2024, a British Columbia labour arbitrator had no hesitation concluding that an employee, who was the grievor accusing a female colleague of sexual harassment in this case, was actually the one who was sexually harassing the female colleague. Simply put, the arbitrator found that the grievor’s evidence was not credible, the female colleague’s account was credible and consistent with the evidence, and the female colleague did not do what the employee accused her of. As a result, the labour arbitrator agreed with the employer that . . . [more]

Democratization means making something, usually a public good, accessible to everyone. The democratization of technology related to the internet or the democratization of health care are examples. As digital technologies become more widely adopted in areas touching peoples’ daily lives such as making appointments, applications for employment, being informed about changes in conditions of services or bargains available in the marketplace the reasons for making enabling technologies accessible to everyone become increasingly obvious. In a nation with a long-standing system of publicly funded health care the reasons are obvious although the realization seems to be falling short. In justice democratization . . . [more]

I recently read that when legal aid was first developed in the United States in the 1960s, its primary goal was alleviation of poverty rather than access to counsel. However, over time, some stakeholders, mostly on the conservative side of the political spectrum, expressed concern that this was an inappropriate goal for public policy. This led people working in the legal aid sector to rebrand their initiatives as access to justice.[1] The primary difference between framing initiatives as “access to justice” as opposed to “alleviation of poverty” being that access to justice has a goal of improving the legal system . . . [more]

Note: In this article, the term “culture” is used broadly and is intended to mean anything and everything related to one’s customs, beliefs, behaviours and habits attributable to the make-up of who they are. It embraces the concept introduced to the writer by legendary professor Michelle LeBaron which appreciates that each individual person subscribes to several different cultures. Any one person may have a cultural component of themselves attributable to their age, surroundings, work, etc.

Afsana Gibson-Chowdhury is the founder of Gibson Chowdhury, Clear Collaborative Mediation and a renowned advocate for equity, diversity and inclusion among legal, dispute resolution and . . . [more]

Last week, I was asked to provide a peer-review of an article submission to a law journal.

After reviewing it thoroughly, I began to suspect that at least some of the content may have been AI-generated.

What Gives?

First off, there were at least two citations that led to dead ends. By now we all know this is a dead give away.

Second, there was little to no language linking paragraphs together. So there might have been two or three paragraphs written on a distinctive topic, but no language to alert the reader that a new topic was about to . . . [more]