Love it or hate it, everyone is on Zoom these days, including lawyers.

The company notes that daily use went up from 10 million users a day in December 2019, to over 200 million daily users in March 2020. On March 23, 2020 alone, the app was downloaded 2.13 million times globally.

Social distancing during COVID-19 has in no insignificant way pushed the use of this platform to new levels, with share prices going from $70 in January to $150 by the the end of March 2020. Yet, the platform was never designed with this type of use in mind. . . . [more]

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 Ju stice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : Les appelants, déclarés coupables sous divers chefs d’accusation relatifs à des opérations frauduleuses dans le contexte de l’affaire Cinar, échouent dans leurs appels des verdicts de culpabilité les visant et des peines qui leur ont été imposées.

Intitulé : Xanthoudakis c. R., 2020 QCCA 446
Juridiction . . . [more]

The increased utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) has been identified as giving rise to numerous privacy concerns.^[1] For illustration, “the data protection principle of limiting collection may be incompatible with the basic functionality of AI systems”. AI systems generally rely on large amounts of personal data to train and test algorithms, and limiting some of the data could lead to reduced quality and utility of the output.^[2]

Another issue is that organizations using AI for advanced data analytics may not know ahead of time how the information that is processed by an AI system will be used or . . . [more]

Written by Daniel Standing LL.B., Editor, First Reference Inc.

In Hicks and Winnipeg Exclusive Bus Tours Inc., Re, (Sept. 19, 2019), Doc. YM 2727-3941 (Can. Lab. Code Adj.) the arbitrator Bryan Schwartz was appointed by the federal Minister of Labour to hear a complaint of wrongful dismissal under the Canada Labour Code. The case provides a stark reminder to employers about the sufficiency of evidence necessary to support a claim of just cause for dismissal. . . . [more]

As I am writing this, everything else has been knocked out of the news and our consciousness by the emergence of COVID-19 as a pandemic.

As we struggle to cope with COVID-19 we are facing hard questions – sometimes choices – as members of our own communities, as Canadians, and as world citizens.

• How well does our existing infrastructure – health care, labour rights, social services – mitigate some of the impact of the virus?
• Did our civic governments take enough notice of the earlier warning signs of the pandemic and respond in time?
• Are we doing enough to protect

In person if necessary, but not necessarily in person…

The Superior Court of Justice in Ontario issued a notice on March 13, advising people not to go into any courthouse, if they have been advised to self-isolate in response to the growing COVID-19 pandemic. The courts remain open to the media and public (this may have changed since I wrote this…) but anyone who has COVID-19 symptoms, has been advised to self-isolate, or has travelled from an area under a travel advisory should stay away. This includes civil litigants and criminal defendants, who are advised to contact their lawyer or . . . [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. Ribeiro v Wright, 2020 ONSC 1829 (CanLII)

19 Most of our social, government and employment institutions are struggling to cope with COVID-19. That includes our court system. Despite extremely limited resources, we will always prioritize cases involving children. But parents and lawyers should be mindful of the practical limitations we are facing.

20 If a parent has a concern that COVID-19 . . . [more]