Monday’s Mix

Each Monday we present brief excerpts of recent posts from five of Canada’s award­-winning legal blogs chosen at random* from sixty 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. Double Aspect 2. Entertainment & Media Law Signal 3. AvoidAClaim Blog 4. Barry Sookman 5. Pensions & Benefits Law

Double Aspect
Judges, Lawyers, and Science

It might have looked like an essentially technical matter, but the Supreme Court’s recent decision in R. v. Tatton, 2015 SCC 33 turns out to be full of interesting things to discuss. I have already written about what it might suggest about the Court’s views on mandatory minimum sentences, and what it tells us about the respective roles of the courts and Parliament in law reform. I come back to it again to follow up on Lisa Silver’s very interesting post over at Ideablawg about the lack of scientific foundations beneath Justice Moldaver’s opinion for a unanimous court….

Entertainment & Media Law Signal
The Complexities of Canada’s Extension of Copyright Protection for Sound Recordings

On June 23, 2015, Royal Assent was given to Parliament’s Bill C-59, otherwise known as the Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1, otherwise known as the federal government’s 2015 budget. Contained in the legislation are provisions which amend the Cpyright Act (Canada) to extend the duration of Canadian copyright protection for sound recordings. For how long has copyright protection been extended? …

AvoidAClaim Blog
Keeping up with the Joneses — or not

Lawyers often talk about the stress and burden of debt. If there is one piece of advice worth giving, it is a simple one: spend less than you earn. As a new lawyer, I was excited when I received my first paycheque. I forgot what I spent it on, but I remember it disappeared as soon as I received it. Soon I was living paycheque to paycheque. How could it be possible to live hand to mouth on Bay Street? …

Barry Sookman
Digital Privacy Act (Bill S-4) now law

The Digital Privacy Act was given a quick third reading in the House yesterday and was speedily given royal assent to become law earlier today. This law, which has been in the making since 2007, updates Canada’s comprehensive federal privacy legislation PIPEDA in quite significant ways. I previously summarized salient aspects of the law in my blog posts, Digital Privacy Act: Important work still to be done by the INDU Committee and Cyber threats, information sharing and The Digital Privacy Act. …

Pensions & Benefits Law
Solvency Reserve Accounts (Part III) – “Oh and One More Thing…Payment of Benefits and Expenses”

In our previous two articles in this series (Part I and Part II), we considered issues related to setting up an Alberta (and eventually BC) defined benefit plan solvency reserve account (SRA) and sponsor verses administrator roles in establishing, and making withdrawals from, an SRA. In this post, we examine the issue of benefit and plan administration expense payments from an SRA. …

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*Randomness here is created by Random.org and its list randomizing function.