There has been much debate about the federal government’s decision on June 17^th to give a green light to the controversial Northern Gateway pipeline project. And there is obviously much more ahead. This will certainly be a summer of discontent in the communities along the pipeline’s proposed route and elsewhere in British Columbia and across Canada; with plans for rallies, protests and blockades already coming together. There is much to come in the courts as well, with several legal challenges already underway and others soon to follow.

There is, to say the least, much fodder for both protests and . . . [more]

The most recent legal aid data are now available in tabular form on Cansim rather than in the familiar publication , Legal Aid in Canada: Resource and Caseload Statistics, which has been discontinued. Keeping track of trend and change in legal aid has never been more important. Legal aid is by far the largest part of the access to justice landscape in Canada. Even with constraints of the current fiscal realities, or perhaps because of them, legal aid systems have the infrastructure, the expertise and the resources to contribute significantly to expanding access to justice in Canada.

The good news . . . [more]

When it comes to protecting species at risk, and fulfilling mandatory obligations under the Species at Risk Act (SARA), it seems the Federal Government must be goaded into action by litigation brought by conservation groups. Two recent cases highlight government foot-dragging in developing plans to protect species that are at urgent risk, due in part to a lack of “organizational capacity” (i.e. staff cuts). The government will rarely disclose whether a protection plan is even in the works.

The Federal Government did, however, find the time and resources to swiftly downgrade the status of the North Pacific Humpback Whale from . . . [more]

As a Bencher of the Law Society of BC, I voted against the accreditation of TWU Law. I was on the losing side of a 20-7 vote. The next day, my wife and I left for a road trip through the American South.

We started in Chicago, marveled at its architecture for a few days and then took an overnight train to Memphis. From there, we drove down the eastern bank of the Mississippi through the “cradle of the civil war” and over Cajun swamps to our final destination of New Orleans. We drove through the rural sun-baked squalor of . . . [more]

Legendary reporter Christie Blatchford has long been feared by Toronto-area criminal defence lawyers. I personally have experienced a clawing sense of unease on those occasions when I have glanced over my shoulder before embarking on a difficult cross-examination and noted her at the front of the public gallery, pen poised to scratch furiously into notebook. Blatchford’s style for many years has been incisive, descriptive, graphic, and often ruthless when she (more often than not) reaches the conclusion (usually well in advance of the trial judge or jury) that your client is a fiendish monster. So legendary is her vitriol and . . . [more]

Romania joined the European Union in 2007. Accordingly, its citizens can presumably benefit from the recent ruling of the Court of Justice of the EU compelling search engines to comply in certain circumstances with requests from individuals to “de-link” search results where their privacy interests are implicated. But what rights, if any, are possessed by a Canadian who carries out a vanity Google search of their name and discovers that a Romanian website has republished personal details from a Canadian court case that is on the internet, yet “practically obscure” through its unlinked presence on CanLII? This is . . . [more]

Ten years ago the Canadian government launched a public inquiry to look into whether the actions of Canadian officials had contributed to the torture and other grave human rights violations that a Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, had experienced while he was illegally imprisoned in Syria for a year in 2002 and 2003. How deeply disappointing, therefore, that ten years on we seem to be losing ground in addressing one of the most distressing revelations coming out of that inquiry: the insidious connection between shoddy, even unlawful, intelligence-sharing practices and torture.

Maher Arar had been arrested in September 2002 by US . . . [more]

Across Canada, municipalities run Blue Box programs to collect recyclable materials and to divert them from landfill. The Blue Box is a popular and important environmental initiative, but Blue Box systems have become surprisingly expensive. Early hopes were that Blue Box programs could be funded by selling the recaptured material, but that turns out to cover perhaps a third of the cost. Waste Diversion Ontario (WDO) reported verified net Blue Box costs of about $237 million for 2012 in Ontario alone, after all revenue but before prior year adjustments.

So, who should pay that $237 million? Municipalities and their taxpayers? . . . [more]

Organizations pursuing civil justice objectives need a website. On this point, there can be no doubt. Often operating with constrained budgets, these organizations need an efficient and appealing means to inform stakeholders and attract supporters and, in this regard, nothing can be more cost effective than a website. It’s now an article of faith that promotion of that website and engagement of those stakeholders also requires an active social media presence. But do the facts support that view?

Based on analysis[i] of social media engagement with CanLII (a free-to-access legal information site containing nearly 1.3 million court and tribunal . . . [more]

While we don’t have much by way of empirical data about what actually happens to claims filed in the superior courts, we do know that only about 2% to 5% of these cases are ultimately resolved by way of trial.[1] In light of this fact, the conclusion is sometimes drawn that at least 95% of filed cases settle – that is, resolve without trial. Research completed over the last few years however, should serve to displace this assumption. Research into the nature and scale of unmet legal need and into the phenomena of self represented litigants, makes it clear . . . [more]

It is time to take a stand against all the bogus rhetoric about bogus refugees.

Our current Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Chris Alexander, has unfortunately taken a shine to making frequent use of the pejorative, inflammatory and meaningless term. That was certainly the case last month when he decided to take Ontario Health Minister Deb Matthews to task for her decision to step in and provide essential health care coverage for large numbers of refugee claimants who had been cut out of the federal government’s longstanding refugee health care program.

On January 22^nd he chided Minister Matthews, complaining . . . [more]

Short of a historic influx of legal aid funding to pave the way forward, any trans-Canada highway to equal justice must be cobbled together piece by piece, steppingstone by steppingstone. Progress is likely to be slow and painstaking, but should eventually come from a mix of incremental enhancements and bold reforms. In the spirit of resolute movement forward, I offer two ideas imported from the old world—one relatively challenging and the other relatively mundane—for balancing the scales of justice for Canadian civil and family litigants:

1. embrace the civil law principle of equality of arms; and
2. introduce legislation permitting pro bono