I don’t normally do movie reviews, but Spectre, the latest James Bond movie, has a cautionary tale about the surveillance society that is worth commenting on. It deals with the undemocratic / totalitarian / dystopian aspects of ubiquitous surveillance.

Some reviewers have been critical about the movie, but my view of Bond movies is that they are more about entertainment than plot and character development.

Some elements of the movie are uncomfortably real – like its spin on the five eyes network . After I saw it I wondered what Ed Snowden would think. This is what Wikipedia has to . . . [more]

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 this last week:

1. R. v. Morris, 2011 ONSC 5142

12. The defence argued that, because the police did not believe Mr. Morris had committed an HTA infraction, they did not have an HTA-related purpose for stopping Mr. Morris’ vehicle. In so arguing, the defence pointed to Officer Ciric’s candid statement that, but for the “Caution”, he would not have pulled over the car. Because . . . [more]

As you know, the Canadian Senate Committee on Banking, Trade and Commerce published earlier this year a report on Bitcoin and other digital currencies. Bradley Crawford, author of the leading banking law treatise in Canada, has recently written a commentary on that report and on digital currencies generally. That comment – quite critical of the Senate’s report – will be added to his treatise later this month.

He raises one issue that seems to me particularly important to those who promote the use of digital currencies in commercial exchanges: the transfer of control of units of Bitcoin (or equivalent) . . . [more]

A residential landlord is $50,000 poorer after unsuccessfully challenging the constitutionality of the City of Waterloo’s Rental Housing Licensing Program.

In 2011 the City of Waterloo implemented By-law047 and a new comprehensive rental housing licensing program. The purpose was, among other things, to improve the health and safety of residential tenants.

The program requires most landlords of low-rise units to submit:

1. A general inspection report from the electrical safety authority (every 5 years);
2. An HVAC certificate (every 5 years);
3. Proof of insurance (required annually);
4. A criminal record check (every 5 years); and
5. A floor plan for each unit.

Landlords are . . . [more]

The Law Society of Upper Canada ABS Working Group delivered an interim report to Convocation in September. In reading some of the subsequent comments, I was reminded of Nick Robinson’s thoughtful paper When Lawyers Don’t Get All the Profits. As he said in an interview with Cristin Schmitz:

I’ve been amazed in this debate how much each side kind of talks past each other, dismisses the concerns of the other side, or the point of the other side.

In its interim report, the Working Group reported that it would not further consider non-licensee ownership or control of traditional practices . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on technology, research and practice.

Research & Writing

Deciphering Legal Citations
Susannah Tredwell

Legal citations like to pack the largest amount of information in the smallest amount of space. However, if you are not familiar with the abbreviation for a specific law journal or reporter, it can be tricky figuring out what is being referred to from a few scant letters. …

Practice

Map Your Future
David Bilinsky

“Think Different” was the slogan for Apple, . . . [more]

While the primary responsibility for wellness rests with the individual, nothing is more important to a law practice than its lawyers and staff. The “firm” – Big Law or a solo practice – can do nothing without people; the better those people feel, the more productive they will be, and the more profitable the firm will be. It follows that a firm has an interest in helping its people be healthy and well. How can a firm help?

Reduce Stress: Some stress is inherent and necessary in a law practice. Reducing unnecessary stress, however, will have a positive impact on . . . [more]

Patents have been described as a quid pro quo – in return for disclosure of the invention, the inventor gets a time limited exclusive period to practice the invention. There are a number of rules and restrictions that restrict the ability to extend patent rights – i.e. get more than the patent owner bargained for, including ‘double patenting’ but some of the earlier concerns about extending patent protection through double patenting no longer apply under our current Patent Act which requires that patents and any divisional patents expire on the same day.

Double patenting is a restriction on getting multiple . . . [more]

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

Attributed to Nelson Mandela, that quote fits the experience of groups around the world that sought over much of the past 20 years to make the law freely accessible on the internet. Beginning today (November 9^th), dozens of members of the Free Access to Law Movement (FALM), along with other supporters, are meeting in Sydney, Australia where AustLII is hosting the 2015 Law via the Internet conference. Some countries attending are currently at the “impossible” stage and look to achievements in Canada and elsewhere for inspiration of what is possible. . . . [more]

What is a good lawyer? What is a smarter lawyer, for that matter?

How we evaluate ourselves, and our colleagues, may have historically been based on outdated notions of an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. But in the era of search engines and legal databases, the utility of such skill sets are not nearly as useful as in the past.

Harvey Schachter of The Globe interviewed Edward Hess on how workers can improve in an era balancing on the precipice of machine learning:

…start to change your mental model of what “smart” looks like. We have been trained to believe

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): La fouille de la valise du requérant avant qu’il ne passe les arches de sécurité du palais de justice était conforme à l’article 282.0.6 de la Loi sur les tribunaux judiciaires; par conséquent, la découverte dans sa poche d’un comprimé de méthamphétamine est recevable en preuve.

Intitulé . . . [more]

Summaries of selected recent cases are provided each week to Slaw by Maritime Law Book. Every Sunday we present a precis of the latest summaries, a fuller version of which can be found on MLB-Slaw Selected Case Summaries at cases.slaw.ca.

This week’s summaries concern: Criminal Law – Aliens – Civil Rights – Habeas Corpus – Statutes – Insurance

R. v. Canto (N.) 2015 ABCA 306
Criminal Law
Summary: In 2009, s. 719(3) of the Criminal Code was amended to cap pretrial credit at a presumptive maximum of 1 day for each day in pretrial custody. However, under s. . . . [more]