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. R. v. Lloyd, 2016 SCC 13

[1] Parliament has the power to proscribe conduct as criminal and determine the punishment for it, and judges have the duty to apply the laws Parliament adopts on punishment to offenders. But individuals are also entitled to receive, and judges have a duty to impose, sentences that are constitutional having regard to the circumstances of each case that comes before them. Sometimes a judge’s duty to apply a mandatory minimum sentence provision conflicts with the judge’s duty to impose a sentence that does not violate the guarantees of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In this appeal, the Court is once again confronted with the problem of how the imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence can be reconciled with the imperative that no person shall be punished in a manner than infringes the Charter.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

2. Longueépée v. University of Waterloo, 2019 ONSC 5465

[22] The applicant argued that the 65% admissions standard was discriminatory because his Dalhousie grades had been attained when his disability had not been diagnosed, and therefore had gone unaccommodated. The HRTO accepted that the applicant’s disabilities impacted his ability to meet the 65% admissions standard, and that he was adversely impacted by this standard. The HRTO considered whether Waterloo had accommodated the applicant in the admissions process to the point of undue hardship, pursuant to s. 11 of the Code.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

3. Pioneer Corp. v. Godfrey, 2019 SCC 42

[165] As a result, I disagree with my colleague that the limitation period in s. 36(4)(a)(i) begins to run on the date that the conduct contrary to Part VI is either discovered or discoverable by the plaintiff. Properly interpreted, the triggering event in this statutory provision “clearly occurs without regard to the injured party’s knowledge”, and the provision does not contain “wording to [the same] effect” as “accrual” of the s. 36 cause of action. A proper application of the Fehr test therefore leads to the conclusion that the discoverability rule does not apply. Applying discoverability would make the limitation period chosen by Parliament virtually meaningless and create uncertainty around the likelihood and timing of significant litigation.

(Check for commentary on CanLII Connects)

The most-consulted French-language decision was Srougi c. Coopérative de solidarité en édition Les Boucaniers et Boucanières, 2008 QCCQ 7693

[56] En terminant, le Tribunal tient à exprimer les commentaires suivants. Pendant les trois jours du procès tenu en la présente instance, le Tribunal a pu constater qu’il existe un vif débat entre, d’un côté, les partisans(es) des droits des hommes ou des pères et, de l’autre, des droits des femmes sous tous leurs aspects, y compris celui d’atteindre un meilleur équilibre dans l’égalité des droits entre les hommes et les femmes. Le Tribunal déplore les excès de langage utilisés par certains ténors qui revendiquent de meilleurs droits pour les hommes et pour les pères et qu’il n’est pas utile de reproduire aux fins du présent jugement.

(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.