The enactment of Canada’s medically assisted dying legislation in June 2017 left three areas in particular outstanding: whether mature minors could seek a medically assisted death, whether medically assisted death would be available when the reason for seeking it is mental illness and whether an individual could provide for an advance directive for a medically assisted death when they were no longer able to consent.

Here I make some remarks about advance directives, using the report from the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), which had been given the responsibility by the government to gather information about the three issues (the . . . [more]

I never make “New Year’s resolutions” — I’m too old to think that they will come to fruition — but I have decided to identify five “wishes’ I have for Ontario and Canada more broadly in 2019: 1. stop all the studies and take action re A2J; 2. provide lessons to the premier about what the rule of law means; 3. allow advance directives for medically assisted deaths; 4. don’t diminish existing protection for children and youth; 5. revise the new Law Society of Ontario logo without too much delay. . . . [more]

One of the fundamental premises of a liberal democracy operating according to a particular view of the rule of law is that the police apparatus, while part of the executive branch, must be free of inappropriate political interference, although they may be subject to political direction within acknowledged bounds. Canada is neither a police or military dictatorship; we have civilian governments at all levels. Police have a certain discretion to act; the executive can determine how police resources are used, as long as it is not done in an arbitrary way; and there is judicial oversight of both police . . . [more]

(Very) traditionally, judges were meant to be heard — only in the courtroom. One of the questions those interested in becoming a judge had to ask themselves was whether they were prepared to become “monks” (the masculine being almost entirely appropriate). Justice John Sopinka famously challenged this notion, pointing out that there were no legal restraints on judges. This is so, although the ethical principles formulated by the Canadian Judicial Council emphasize that judges should avoid controversy, among other things.

A report by the CJC about a complaint that a Quebec judge spoke out of turn to a journalist referred . . . [more]

The ABA’s technology journal has an article advocating legislation to give consumers (or everybody) a right to repair their devices. What this does is prohibit manufacturers from making their devices impossible or dauntingly difficult for the owner to repair, and often for professional mechanics to do as well.

The article gives several examples of the difficulties deliberately created by manufacturers to this end. Its focus is electronic devices, but many other types of goods have also raised the question.

Sometimes repairs can be done by service centres related to the manufacturer, but even then the repairs can be very expensive, . . . [more]

A continuing series of interesting ways that things can go wrong with information technology. Previous installments are here and here.

Devices Gone Wild IV: Hacking Critical Infrastructure through the IoT.

Critical infrastructure is of course infrastructure – communications, power, transportation – that we depend on to support how we live: not just our ‘lifestyle’ but often our life itself.

One may ask why infrastructure of any kind is connected to the notoriously vulnerable Internet at all, but it is (in some places) – for reasons of remote monitoring and control, coordination, effectiveness. A good deal of . . . [more]

Yesterday, the Ontario Cannabis Store (the “OCS“), which will initially be the province’s sole retailer (and later will morph into a wholesaler), announced that it has entered into supply agreements with 26 federally licensed producers after having completed its first competitive product call.

Patrick Ford, President and Chief Operating Officer of the OCS, noted that the agreements allow the province to “safely and securely provide a broad variety of cannabis products to adult consumers when online sales begin” on October 17, 2018.

Although the details of particular products and sizes have not yet been released, the OCS stated . . . [more]

If you are on this site, I can assume with reasonable confidence that you are already a wordsmith. I have always had an affinity for the label “wordsmith”, possibly because I am reminded of “blacksmith” and it conjures skills of which I have none. I do, perhaps, have some skills related to language, although I suppose this is also debatable. Notwithstanding, even from my humble position, I am both angered and ashamed by the comments of Ontario Minister of Social Services Lisa MacLeod and her dim view of the importance of language. In particular, her comments related to the Safe . . . [more]

There is a recent article that suggested that implementing a scent-free or fragrance-free environment policy would help employers know if their employee is high at work from cannabis use, and what actions to take when they catch them high at work.

Most people are familiar with smoking dried cannabis in hand-rolled cigarettes, pipes or water pipes-but people can consume cannabis in many forms, including: “vaping”; eaten in cannabis-infused foods called “edibles” (e.g., cooking oils and drinks); applied as oils, ointments, tinctures, cream and concentrates (e.g., butane hash oil, resins and waxes); and of course, ingested as oral pills and oral . . . [more]

In my defence, I had no idea what I was starting.

When I published a blog post recently about lawyers’ tendency to wear too many hats in law firms, I thought it would be amusing to name the post (and the tendency) after a quote from The Simpsons. Furthermore, when promoting the post on Twitter, I (perhaps rashly) called the quote “the greatest line in the show’s history.”

That assessment did not pass unchallenged. Canadian legal types Alison Crone, Colin Lachance, Ava Chisling, and Julie Sobowale all chimed in with their nominees. “Well,” I said carelessly, . . . [more]

The American Bar Journal reports that some people are harassing their spouses by remote manipulation of smart home devices, like thermostats, TVs and the like – turning the heat way up, or off, turning TVs or radios on and off, etc.

Is this a problem in Canada? Is there a reason that the spouse left in the home can’t just turn off the devices, or the central control device like Alexa?

Would restraining orders need to deal with this kind of ‘contact’ or abuse expressly? . . . [more]

On June 20, 2018, the federal government introduced Bill C-81, An Act to ensure a barrier-free Canada, the long-awaited national accessibility legislation which will enable the government of Canada to take a proactive approach to end systemic discrimination of people with disabilities.

The Bill also known as the Accessible Canada Act would establish a model to eliminate accessibility barriers and lead to more consistent accessibility in areas covered by federally regulated sectors such as banking, inter-provincial and international transportation, telecommunications and government-run services such as Canada Post and federally funded organizations. Moreover, the Bill aims to “identify, remove and . . . [more]