On December 4, 2012, the Saskatchewan government tabled Bill No. 85, An Act respecting Employment Standards, Occupational Health and Safety, Labour Relations and Related Matters and making consequential amendments to certain Acts (hereinafter referred to as the Saskatchewan Employment Act) in the hope of consolidating 12 employment and labour-related laws, restructuring existing provisions, eliminating inconsistencies, and more accurately reflect contemporary employment relationships. . . . [more]

Prof. Larry Lessig gave a superb talk, "Free Culture," this evening at Harvard Law School. The talk is one of a series of special events Harvard Law professor and Berkman Center for Internet & Society director Terry Fisher organized for his 2013 Copyright course, in which I'm lucky enough to be participating. Like all the special events, Prof. Lessig's talk was presented in person to Prof. Fisher's Copyright law school class, via webinar to online course participants (including me), and to the public via archived webcast.

I took a few notes during Prof. Lessig's engaging and stimulating talk, and . . . [more]

A few comments with respect to access to justice caught my attention in the recent Manitoba Queen’s Bench (Family Division) decision in Price v. Laflamme, 2013 MBQB 25 (CanLII). In the course of providing reasons for a decision on costs at the conclusion of a lengthy trial, the trial judge noted that the conduct of the petitioner’s conduct in the matter effectively discouraged any possibility of resolution of the matter. He noted that:

Implicit in that conduct may have been a desire to exhaust the resources of the respondent/father in pursuing his position. No stone was left unturned. No examination

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A recent Ontario Superior Court case gives some interesting guidance on regulatory jurisdiction over Internet activities. Civil jurisdiction is not completely resolved, but there are lots of cases, and criminal jurisdiction is also ‘known’ to some extent. What regulators can do or should do is often harder. I speculated a bit on that topic in a presentation on jurisdiction a few years ago: www.euclid.ca/jurisdiction2005.ppt (pages 15 – 20).

In Ontario College of Pharmacists v. 1724665 Ontario Inc., 2013 CanLII 13655 (ON SC), the court held that a call centre in Ontario that was acting for a company in Belize . . . [more]

On April 1, 2013, the federal government launched the new Social Security Tribunal, which aims to simplify the process of appealing government decisions related to benefits under the Employment Insurance Act, Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security Act. . . . [more]

The Manitoba Law Reform Commission last week issued two reports recommending changes to legislation re: nuisance claims and commercial tenancies.

Report #126 focuses on The Nuisance Act and The Farm Practices Protection Act. These two pieces of legislation currently limit the scope of the common law tort of nuisance in Manitoba. The Commission recommends repeal of The Nuisance Act and a broad, inter-disciplinary and public review of The Farm Practices Protection Act. 

Chapter 2 of the Report contains a succinct and potentially useful summary of the common law of both public and private nuisance and points to the . . . [more]

Increasingly, governments across Canada have been pushing private employers to do more to accommodate and hire disabled Canadians. For example, today, the Federal Government announced new programs and funding to help facilitate the process of finding work for disabled candidates and paying for additional training and/or resources. I think that it's a great program and I applaud the government for this worthwhile initiative. However, will it be effective? Will it make a difference?

The human rights laws of all Canadian jurisdictions have long held that employers are obligated to accommodate disabled employees or candidates to "the point of undue hardship". "Undue hardship" . . . [more]

The literary bug has bitten our courts again, this time infecting the writing hand of Fergus O'Donnell of the Ontario Court of Justice. I came across his judgment in R v. Duncan (2013.03.26), since featured in the Toronto Star, in an ethics email list I belong to, where it came in for a lot of interesting criticism. (It's not yet reported but a PDF copy is available on Slaw.) In the opinion Justice O'Donnell adopted a casual style that owes something to the mystery genre, as well as a good dose of the sardonic approach taken to the . . . [more]

The Law Commissions of Scotland, England and Wales have proposed a clarification of British law about unfair terms in consumer contracts, to ensure that that law applies to end-user licence agreements for software and online services (EULAs).

Canadian jurisdictions do not (so far as I know) have legislation with ‘unfair terms’ in the name, while the UK has implemented the EU Directive on Unfair Terms. (French courts held a decade ago that online contracts, notably the AOL (2004) and Tiscali (2005) subscriber agreements, were subject to the comparable French law – and invalidated a large proportion of the . . . [more]

Across Canada, there is a trend in human rights law to increase protections for transgendered individuals. On March 20, 2013, Bill C-279 to protect the right of the transgendered and make it illegal to discriminate against transgender Canadians under the Canadian Human Rights Act passed third reading in the House of Commons (149-137 vote).
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Mr or Ms Executive, in the ONCA's reasons for judgment released today, to keep your mouth shut about the state of confidential negotiations.

Here's a link to the reasons on the ONCA  and some excerpts.

[1] This appeal is from the judgment of Justice Edward P. Belobaba dismissing the appellant’s application for an order that the respondents disclose the identities of confidential sources for a story written by the respondent Sinclair Stewart and published by the respondent the Globe and Mail Inc. The appellant, whose sole officer, director and shareholder is Jeffrey G. MacIntosh, holder of the Toronto Stock Exchange Chair in Capital Markets

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I'll leave the substantive comments on the validity and merits of the decision to those with the expertise. I'll say only that I suspect the Harperite law & order types involved in the appointment of Justices Moldaver and Karakstanis expected them to line up on the gov't's side and not the civil liberties side.

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