On June 22, 2009, Canada’s federal government announced that a team led by the chair of the B.C. Securities Commission, Doug Hyndman, will lead the transition to a new national securities regulator. Mr. Hyndman will be responsible for negotiating with the provinces—each of which currently has its own securities regulator—as well as developing the legislation that outlines the new national regulator’s mandate. A report is due in a year, with an implementation target of three years.

Goodness knows, this is long overdue. In the absence of a single national securities regulator, efforts have been underway for many years to harmonize . . . [more]

Neither civil libertarians nor privacy advocates are likely to be pleased with the two Bills introduced last week by Canada’s federal government, Bills which are intended to give police wider powers to access online data without a warrant. If passed, the Technical Assistance for Law Enforcement in the 21st Century Act (Bill C-47) will require Internet Service Providers (ISP’s) and other “telecommunications service providers” to install equipment facilitating the interception of communications, and to allow police access, without a warrant, to the personal information of users including names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses and internet protocol addresses. The Investigative Powers . . . [more]

Slaw has discussed a couple of times [* *] whether domain names are property of any kind, including property that can be seized to satisfy creditors. The California Court of Appeal — Palacio del Mar Homeowners Assn., Inc. v. McMahon, Cal.Rptr.3d 2009 WL 1668294 (Cal. App. 4 Dist. June 16, 2009) [PDF] — has recently decided the latter question in the negative: no seizure. (Internet Cases has a summary.)

Part of the issue was whether the domain name was property that could be ‘levied upon by taking it into custody.’ If that’s the test then lots . . . [more]

I’m a big believer in the idea of a solar panel on every rooftop. It just makes sense to me. I would also like to experience an electric car traffic jam, and to have the power of the ocean used to light my home. Some may say I live in a dream world. Maybe now I do, but our world is changing—and in British Columbia my dream has a chance to become reality, thanks to the provincial government’s commitment to renewable energy. 

Premier Gordon Campbell proclaimed on April 23, 2009 that “We are going to be the alternative energy . . . [more]

The world wide economic downturn is prompting companies to sell non-core business units, consolidate operations and generally downsize. Lately, everyone seems to have at least one article devoted to some aspect of restructuring a business—see, for example, the cover story in the June 2009 edition of LEXPERT magazine.

Despite the fact that restructuring initiatives often have a profound impact on employees, few articles are talking about the human resources implications of restructuring a business. Employees have valuable know-how, technical knowledge, and relationships with customers, so their departure or disaffection can have significant and unintended financial consequences for a company.

CNET . . . [more]

Having spent two of the last three weekends in Las Vegas and San Francisco, I got to thinking about cross-border legal issues. I know that’s pathetic, but bear with me.

British Columbia is one of several provinces with reciprocating jurisdictions in the US for the enforcement of judgments. (In BC, this arises pursuant to Part II of the Court Order Enforcement Act, RSBC 1996, c.78). Rather than commence a new action on the foreign judgment, a judgment from a reciprocating jurisdiction can be registered in BC, and it becomes enforceable as if it was a BC judgment. This is . . . [more]

Surprise, surprise. Canada, with its stable equity market and a sound economic policy framework, was able to withstand some of the global credit market issues and moved to first place in the Milken Institute’s 2008 Capital Access Index.

The Index looks at such factors as macroeconomic environments, financial and banking institutions, the development of the equity and bond markets, and alternative capital sources. Because a firm’s access to capital allows it to implement innovative ideas and contribute to technological advancement, job creation and quality of life, the index is a tool for measuring how countries can act to reduce . . . [more]

Get ready for our second firm guest blogger here on Slaw. Starting Monday, you’ll be treated to a week’s worth of wisdom from the west coast, thanks to our guests from Clark Wilson LLP.

As BC’s Law Firm for Business, Clark Wilson LLP provides effective and practical legal advice on commercial issues affecting the business community. This week’s Slaw contributors will share their perspectives on a range of topics relevant to their respective practice areas including securities, intellectual property, corporate finance, insurance, real estate, employment, and renewable energy.

You’ll know that a post is from our guests because you’ll . . . [more]

Turns out the fault was not in our stars but in ourselves: we’d been hacked. We have now removed the offending code and believe that our feeds, whether direct from Slaw or via Feedburner, should be free of pollution. Please let us know if we are mistaken in any respect.

It is likely that within the next few days Slaw will upgrade the version of WordPress it uses to the latest version, as part of our efforts to frustrate hackers. Readers should not notice any change, but the site may be down for an hour or so. We will post . . . [more]

It would appear that the RSS feed for Slaw has been hacked and an advertising link inserted at the top of both the post and comment feeds. Slaw does not run advertising. Moreover, the intrusion has interfered with the readability of the feed for some.

We’re working on solving the problem and apologize to our readers for the annoyance.

UPDATE: The problem would appear to be with Feedburner, which handles our feeds. However you can subscribe to our feed directly from Slaw, and this seems to be working without problems. The direct feed URL is www.slaw.ca/feed/. The direct RSS . . . [more]

Last September, Melanie Bueckert, Legal Research Counsel at the Manitoba Court of Appeal, (and occasional Slaw contributor), saw a reference to the Head-Start Program offered by the Edmonton Law Libraries Association (ELLA). As a law librarian in a small market, I was both aware and envious of the program and the association that presented it. While I fantasized about the possibility of offering a similar program here in Winnipeg, Melanie took a bolder step and asked if it were possible to put on a similar program here, by collaborating with law librarians. Since Melanie was also co-chair of . . . [more]

A former researcher at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg, Manitoba made the news in mid-May after allegedly trying to smuggle genetic material from the Ebola virus across the Manitoba-North Dakota border. CBCNews.ca reported that in his affidavit, the researcher told officers he was working on a vaccine for the Ebola virus and HIV and that on his last day at the lab, he stole 22 vials to use at his new job in the U.S. because he did not want to have to start from the beginning with respect to his research.

With job losses and employees leaving their . . . [more]