The federal private sector privacy regime operates on a consent basis. Unless an exception is applicable consent is needed to collect, use or disclose personal information of another. That consent can be express or implied.

In Royal Bank of Canada v. Trang[1] the Supreme Court of Canada took a practical and pragmatic approach to implied consent under the federal private sector privacy law, Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act[2] (PIPEDA).

Facts

The plaintiff, Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), loaned the Trangs about $35,000. The Trangs defaulted on the loan and RBC obtained a judgment against the Trangs. . . . [more]

Each Thursday we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Trust Accounting in One Hour for Lawyers

© 2017 American Bar Association. All rights reserved.

Slaw readers can receive a 10% discount on purchase of this book. Use the discount code TAOH17 at checkout; this offer is valid from 1/26 – 4/26.

Sheila M. Blackford (@sheilablackford) is a Practice Management Advisor . . . [more]

Immigration lawyers are abuzz with Trump’s recent announcements on immigration. Today, he is expected to sign an executive order that will temporarily ban most refugees and a suspension of visas for citizens of Syria and six other Middle Eastern and African countries. His announcements regarding Mexico and his notorious wall have been alienating latin americans. This all good news for Canada. Lawyers from across the country have been getting more calls from immigrants who see a future of success, prosperity and, yes I will say it, freedom in Canada. To borrow the phrase, Canada has become the beacon on the . . . [more]

That’s the title of a 25 minute video that is worth watching if you have an interest in where computing is going.

Don’t panic if you have just decided to do more of you business computing in the cloud. That isn’t going away any time soon.

It means that we will see more edge or fog computing. Some of the computation that now happens in the cloud will increasingly happen at the edge of the network. That might be in IOT devices, our phones, cars, or Alexa type devices. Think of it as a return to distributed computing. Peer 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. Ernst v. Alberta Energy Regulator, 2017 SCC 1

[1] The appellant, Ms. Ernst, claims that a quasi-judicial, regulatory board, the Alberta Energy Regulator (the “Board”), breached her right to freedom of expression under s. 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. She brought a claim against the Board for damages as an “appropriate and just” remedy under . . . [more]

Last week, the Women’s March overshadowed Trump’s Inauguration. So what was it about Hillary Clinton that people found so nasty? What was it that triggered such comments like: “such a nasty woman”?

And what is it about women lawyers that trigger these attacks? Such as: “Marie Henein is a successful female lawyer at the top of her profession. Total bitch.”

In “Nasty Women and the Rule of Law“, Alice Woolley and Elysa Darling analyze this conundrum. They argue that women lawyers face this backlash because being a lawyer requires women to challenge and subvert gendered norms. Women are . . . [more]

Although legislation to legalize Cannabis is not set to be tabled until the spring, it seems as though the Canadian Senate wants to get the discussion going early.

In the Order and Notice Paper which sets out the agenda for the January 31, 2017, Senate meeting, the Honourable Senator Carignan, P.C. has laid out a number of questions on the topic of legalization that he would like discussed. Those questions include:

(a) What are the implementation costs estimated by the federal government for a system to legalize cannabis in Canada, including a breakdown of costs in the areas of hospitalization . . . [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 research, writing, and practice.

Research & Writing

You Can Quote Me
Neil Guthrie

First off, the verb is quote and the noun really should be quotation – but I would be fighting a pointless rearguard action in trying to stop people from talking about a quote. Single and double quotation marks: In the UK, single quotation marks (usually called ‘inverted commas’) are the default, with anything quoted within a quotation going in double quotation . . . [more]

We spend so much of our time, energy and money on attracting and keeping clients that the thought of firing one seems defeatist. But firing clients can be good for business. Here’s why.

1. Bad clients waste out time. One of the annoying elements of a bad relationship is that it tends to take more of our time to manage than a good relationship. This, in turn, lowers our productivity which has consequences to our overall financial performance and activity goals for the year. And really, who needs that kind of drag in their life?
2. Bad clients almost always dispute their

Email encryption, data breaches and a lawyer’s duty to choose technologies with competence—these are recurring topics here on Slaw and elsewhere. At least two revelations in the last week call us to hark back on this.

First, there is the Law Society of BC’s recent fraud alert from January 19 about fraudsters again targeting lawyers disbursing trust funds. Millions of dollars in a real estate transaction payout were redirected by fraudulent notice of changes in instructions. The recent LSBC alert warns “We do not yet know how the fraudster knew the details of the transaction.” This is eerily similar to . . . [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. Meurrens on Immigration  2. StartupSource
 3. Susan on the Soapbox  4. Off the Shelf  5. Blogue du CRL

Meurrens on Immigration
Understanding Judicial Review

Where a visa application has been refused and an applicant is convinced that the decision is unreasonable then it may be advisable to . . . [more]