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) : Les peines minimales obligatoires de 1 an d’emprisonnement pour les infractions de production et de distribution de matériel de pornographie juvénile sont incompatibles avec l’article 12 de la Charte canadienne des droits et libertés et sont déclarées invalides en vertu de l’article 52 de la Loi constitutionnelle . . . [more]

As a supplement to our Sunday Summary each month, Supreme Advocacy LLP in Ottawa presents Supreme One-Liners, a super-short descriptive guide to the most recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers its more comprehensive weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, summarizing all Appeals, Oral Judgments and Leaves to Appeal granted.

Appeal

Torts: Intimate Partner Violence
Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2026 SCC 16 (41061)

New tort: intimate partner violence

Leaves to Appeal Granted

Criminal Law: Homicide
R. v. Dussault, 2025 QCCA 1433 (42169)

Sentencing issues re consecutive jury trials. . . . [more]

Those familiar with my writing will know that I usually write about artificial intelligence in terms of regulation, governance, and risk. This piece is a slight departure. What follows is a set of reflections for young professionals working in AI, or considering work in the field, at a moment when the pace of change, the visibility of the space, and the pressure to find one’s place in it can easily create more anxiety than clarity. I use the phrase “young professional” in a broad sense. It follows a familiar tradition in reflective writing, but I do not mean it strictly . . . [more]

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Trial by Numbers: A Lawyer’s Guide to Statistical Evidence. By Adam Chilton & Kyle Rozema. New York: Oxford University Press, 2024. 207 p. Includes list of figures and tables, notes, glossary, and index. ISBN 9780197747858 (hardcover) $90.00; ISBN 9780197747865 (softcover) $35.00.

Reviewed by Katarina Daniels
Research Lawyer, Library Services Lead . . . [more]

The legal services sector is in for rough times for the foreseeable future after which we will see a rebirth of legal services entities that bear little resemblance to those operating in the market currently. This is why your firm’s foundational rebuild must happen now.

Law firms are in the midst of grappling with a tsunami of changes within the legal services market that are impacting both practice and business. This is especially true after coming to terms – if we can honestly claim that – with the ravages of the pandemic. I understand that many people would like . . . [more]

Early in my career in education, I was introduced to a learning scale that offered both my students and me a different way of thinking about competency. The scale looks like this:

Understanding the Competency Continuum

Let’s consider this through a real-world example: learning to drive a car.

Before you begin learning to drive, you have little understanding of either the process itself or the rules of the road. At that stage, you are unconsciously incompetent. You do not yet know what you do not know.

As you begin to learn, however, you quickly realize how much there is . . . [more]

With Chief Justice Morawetz set to ride off into the sunset, the Ontario Superior Court will soon be graced with a new leader. While it can be anticipated that the new Chief will continue the court’s mission to prioritize form over substance, it is respectfully suggested that the new Chief Justice focus on a more pressing, if less intellectually stimulating endeavor, namely working to make the Ontario Superior Court less terrible.

As a branch of government entirely dependent on the public purse, the Court finds itself with a dwindling number of friends or supporters. Part of this results from . . . [more]

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from more than 80 recent Clawbie winners. In this way we hope to promote their work, with their permission, to as wide an audience as possible.

This week the randomly selected blogs are 1. Robeside Assistance 2. Timely Disclosure 3. The Court 4. Barry Sookman 5. Reconciliation Syllabus

Robeside Assistance
Recently Published Ottawa Decisions

In a family law dispute, the Court dismissed a father’s motion for DNA paternity testing, finding it lacked evidentiary support and served no useful purpose. The Court . . . [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) : Il existe une preuve à l’appui d’une conclusion de culpabilité mais, en raison des multiples faiblesses de cette preuve contradictoire, celle-ci ne peut satisfaire à la norme de la preuve hors de tout doute raisonnable de l’actus reus d’attouchements sexuels; la déclaration de culpabilité prononcée par . . . [more]

One Sunday each month we bring you a summary from Supreme Advocacy LLP of recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers a weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, to which you may subscribe. It’s a summary of all Appeals, Oral Judgments and Leaves to Appeal granted from March 1 – April 17, 2026 inclusive.

Appeal

Charter: Discrimination Based on Sex; Subsidized Childcare
Quebec (Attorney General) v. Kanyinda, 2024 QCCA 144; 2026 SCC 7 (41210) Mar. 6, 2026

Québec became the first province in Canada to introduce universal subsidized daycare, which marked . . . [more]

As a supplement to our Sunday Summary each month, Supreme Advocacy LLP in Ottawa presents Supreme One-Liners, a super-short descriptive guide to the most recent decisions at the Supreme Court of Canada. Supreme Advocacy LLP offers its more comprehensive weekly electronic newsletter, Supreme Advocacy Letter, summarizing all Appeals, Oral Judgments and Leaves to Appeal granted.

Appeal

Civil Litigation/Mortgages: Res Judicata; Cause of Action Estoppel
Patrick Street Holdings Ltd. v. 11368 NL Inc., 2026 SCC 15 (41296)

Clarification re res judicata & cause of action estoppel.

Leaves to Appeal Granted

Professions: Pharmacists
Haggaï v. Loiselle, 2025 QCCA 932 (41976) . . . [more]

On March 6th, a prominent group of publishers including the 5 biggest global book publishers (Hachette, Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Macmillan and Simon and Schuster) filed a lawsuit in NY federal court to try and shut down the shadow library “Anna’s Archive”. A decade ago, John Willinsky described scholarly publishing as having its “Napster moment” with the emergence of pirate sites like LibGen and Sci-Hub. The race to train large language models using sites like Anna’s Archive (which is the successor site of Libgen/Sci-Hub) feels like a second act, where these sites are not just channels for . . . [more]