Tuesday January 24, 2012, First Nations chiefs from across Canada met with the Prime Minister and an array of his cabinet ministers. Was there an expectation of material results? The chief of Attawapiskat attended; her deputy chief, when interviewed by the C.B.C. asked rhetorically whether anything would be different “tomorrow” because of the meeting.

It may be better that the meeting happened than not having had the meeting. It lends credibility and legitimacy to the demands of First Nations leaders. But there are a series of fundamental obstacles that will prevent significant change until those obstacles are removed. This column . . . [more]

A group of Ottawa area students and young professionals has launched Zegov.ca, which describes itself as a “content aggregator designed to provide the public, the media and public-service employees with a continuous flow of information generated by government institutions through social media.”

Zegov.ca offers a single gateway to content from federal government Twitter and Facebook channels and official blogs.

According to the creators, there are 222 government Twitter accounts, 95 Facebook pages and 11 official blogs right now. Zegov.ca soon plans to add content from official federal YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn accounts.

On the Zegov.ca site, you can find . . . [more]

It has now been six months since the “first step” Google+ API was released; and unfortunately, it remains a read only tool. Six months! That’s an incredibly long time for a company trying to innovate and play catch-up with a competitor that is so far in front. If Google wants continued loyalty from the grass roots developer community, they need to enable this basic aspect of interoperability — writing into the Google+ ecosystem from outside applications and websites is critical to its evolution.

For the legal community, this means lawyers and firms will continue to spend time manually sharing content. . . . [more]

Site news for those who read Slaw only via RSS or email

1. Comment Watch:

In the last week there were 35 comments. You might be particularly interested in these:

• The exchange between Emily Vella and Connie Crosby on the latter’s post, “New Social Media Darling Pinterest and Copyright Law”
• Comments by Robert Richards and Robert McKay in which they share links to their Slaw pieces that touch on the topic explored by Susan Munro in “The Context of Legal Information.”

You can subscribe to the comments on Slaw either as a separate matter (RSS, email) or . . . [more]

This January, Silicon Valley got political, and effectively so. The giants of the valley were soon credited with saving the Internet from the threat of Hollywood-inspired legislative clamp-down on online piracy. Google – “End piracy, not liberty” – as well as Facebook and Wikipedia, actively opposed two draconian bills Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) that were seen to pose threats to the free flow of information that opened the door to censorship. The bills were effectively “defeated” by the corporate and non-profit outcry.

However, what was left standing is the Research Works . . . [more]

Here are the three most-consulted English-language cases on CanLII for the week of March 1 – 7.

♨ 1. R. v. Grant 2009 SCC 32

[1] Mr. Grant appeals his convictions on a series of firearms offences, relating to a gun seized by police during an encounter on a Toronto sidewalk. The gun was entered as evidence against Mr. Grant and formed the basis of his convictions. The question on this appeal is whether that evidence was obtained in breach of Mr. Grant’s Charter rights, and if so, whether the evidence should have been excluded under s. 24(2) of the

Yes, “The new iPad”, not the iPad 3, or the iPad HD, and no doubt millions of people will rush to buy one. In Q4, Apple sold 15.4 million ipads – which is more than any PC manufacturer sold of theirPC lines. 

I upgraded to a Google Galaxy Nexus phone a few weeks ago – and for a short time actually had cutting edge tech for both smartphones and tablets. That is always going to be a short-lived experience.

The new iPad features a higher resolution display, quad-core processor, better camera and HD 1080P video recording (like the iPhone 4s). . . . [more]

Many SLAW readers will already be familiar with the excellent video legal research tutorials that the Courthouse Libraries BC have put together. If you are not I encourage you to check them out. The videos look great and really demonstrate the power of the medium as a teaching tool.

The tutorials provide the novice researcher with an excellent introduction on how to approach researching legislation and case law. For those of use who are librarians or lawyers working with students, the tutorials are a wonderful resource for supplementing and reinforcing our instruction and giving students something short and engaging . . . [more]

Lawyers have not adequately met the vague notion of due diligence when it comes to legal technology, probably because they are unable to. This realization hit me at a CLE seminar when one of the panelists – perhaps me – made the comment that, if lawyers want to use cloud computing, they should perform due diligence about the company they were going to use. The lawyer’s response was, “how do I do that?”

Due diligence is way of showing one has acted reasonably. When it comes to technology, it’s an assessment of all of the variables that impact the . . . [more]

Recently, I made a major life change. After having been at my firm, Norton Rose Canada, for a number of years, I accepted an offer to become senior counsel, employee relations, for a major Canadian retailer. My focus is going from a mostly Quebec-based practice, to one with Canada-wide scope.

In the same vein, I’ve decided to change the focus of the blog I created (the Quebec Labour Law Blog) to give it a national and international scope. I have the benefit now of having collaborators from ex-colleagues from across the Norton Rose Group (Australia, South Africa, Germany, France, . . . [more]

♬ There is no turning back from this unending path of mine…♬

Lyrics, music and recorded by HIM.

The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia has released guidelines on cloud computing for public bodies.

You can view the guidelines at the following link: http://www.oipc.bc.ca/pdfs/public/CloudComputingGuidelines(February2012).pdf

There are several interesting aspects to the guidelines:

In addition to the requirement for public bodies to protect personal information no matter where it is, FIPPA also requires public bodies to ensure that, subject to three exceptions listed in s. 30.1 of FIPPA, personal information is only stored in and accessed

Quebec media is reporting today that the city of Huntingdon, south of Montreal, will be contesting what is commonly known as Bill 101, or officially, the Charter of the French Language (see here or here).

In January of this year, the Office de la langue française (“Office”) received a complaint alleging that the city was sending out bilingual documents in its communications to its citizens. The Office invited the city to respect section 15 of the Charter of the French Language that states:

15. The civil administration shall draw up and publish its texts and documents in the official