Wednesday: What’s Hot on CanLII

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For the week of December 18 – 25:

1. R. v. N.S. 2012 SCC 72
   

   [1] How should the state respond to a witness whose sincerely held religious belief requires her to wear a niqab that covers her face, except for her eyes, while testifying in a criminal proceeding? One response is to say she must always remove her niqab on the ground that the courtroom is a neutral space where religion has no place. Another response is to say the justice system should respect the witness’s freedom of religion and always permit her to testify with the niqab on. In my view, both of these extremes must be rejected in favour of a third option: allowing the witness to testify with her face covered unless this unjustifiably impinges on the accused’s fair trial rights.

2. Meads v. Meads 2012 ABQB 571
   

   [1] This Court has developed a new awareness and understanding of a category of vexatious litigant. As we shall see, while there is often a lack of homogeneity, and some individuals or groups have no name or special identity, they (by their own admission or by descriptions given by others) often fall into the following descriptions: Detaxers; Freemen or Freemen-on-the-Land; Sovereign Men . . .

3. Waterloo Catholic District School Board v CUPE, Local 2512 2012 CanLII 51844 (ON LA)
   

   The Union filed this grievance because of the failure of the Employer to post the position of Receptionist in the Education Centre. It says that the Employer violated Article 15 of the collective agreement along with other provisions. There is no dispute that the collective agreement was not followed but the Employer claims that it was justified in so doing because of the provisions of the Ontario Human rights Act (hereinafter OHRA) which obligate it, and the Union , to accommodate disabled employees.

The most-consulted French-language decision was Langevin 2012 QCCS 613

[1] Sylvio Langevin réclame la propriété de la planète Terre. Dans un autre dossier entrepris le même jour, il réclame celle des planètes Mercure, Vénus, Jupiter, Saturne et Uranus, ainsi que des quatre grosses lunes de Jupiter.