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 this last week:

1. Saugeen First Nation v Ontario (MNRF), 2017 ONSC 3456

[144] During my detailed review of the dealings among the parties I made numerous findings that various acts or omissions by MNRF were “breaches” of the Crown’s duty to consult. As noted above, Treaties are not to be construed like commercial agreements. Similarly, the conduct of the parties during consultations is not weighed on the basis of contract law. The repeated “breaches” rendered the Crown duty to consult undischarged, and nothing more. Thus when an adequate consultation process is completed, any prior failures in the process will have been cured. The only remedy for past problems in the process lies in a request for funding to cover associated costs for SON, a request that the Crown will be obliged to decide reasonably, given all the circumstances.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Carr v Ottawa Police Services Board, 2017 ONSC 4331

[2] The course of the afternoon turned in a moment, when Roxanne stood up from the front steps to enter her home and retrieve her personal belongings. Roxanne was not permitted to leave the premises peaceably, as she intended. Instead, the situation escalated. Roxanne was taken to the ground, handcuffed, and arrested. A total of seven police officers were involved in detaining Roxanne, arresting her, transporting her to the police station, searching her, restraining her upper and lower limbs, placing her in a holding cell, searching her a second time, and leaving her naked in the cell for several hours before she was permitted to leave the Ottawa police station.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Gendron v Thompson Fuels, 2017 ONSC 4009

[319] There is no question that the costs of remediation would have been substantially reduced if the oil had not reached Sturgeon Lake. But it did and, once there, had to be remediated. In my view, the question of what the remediation would have cost if the oil had never reached Sturgeon Lake goes to the issue of foreseeability and the issue of contributory negligence, rather than the issue of damages. Given the proximity of Mr. Gendron’s house to the lake, the possibility that an oil leak would migrate to the lake was reasonably foreseeable, and I have already considered the issue of contributory negligence.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Syndicat de la fonction publique et parapublique du Québec (SFPQ) c. Chagnon, 2017 QCCA 271

[7] La question que pose le pourvoi est celle de savoir si l’Assemblée nationale du Québec (ci-après « l’Assemblée nationale ») peut congédier trois de ses employés syndiqués, des gardiens de sécurité (aussi appelés gardiens ouvriers) sans avoir à se soumettre au processus d’arbitrage des griefs prévu à la convention collective. L’objection formulée par le président de l’Assemblée nationale est fondée sur l’exercice du privilège parlementaire qui lui est conféré par la Constitution canadienne.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

* As of January 2014 we measure the total amount of time spent on the pages rather than simply the number of hits; as well, a case once mentioned won’t appear again for three months.