Top Ten Accessed Cases on CanLII From 2020

Reaching December means that it’s time to look at the year in review and share what most interested you in the preceding twelve months through the lens of what court decisions you were all reading. 2020 feels like it’s been a year like no other, but there are things that have been constant and Canadians accessing case law via CanLII has been one of them.

That said, there are four current cases on the top ten list this year, compared to three in 2019, and none in 2018. It seems this is because of a break with prior years as COVID-19 made us move forward with new precedents. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov is listed as the most visited case twice, in English it is the most visited case overall and in French it was the third most visited case. The two versions have been combined for the purposes of the list.

Here are the top ten most accessed decisions in 2020:

• Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration) v. Vavilov, 2019 SCC 65
• Ribeiro v Wright, 2020 ONSC 1829
• Baker v. Canada (Minister of Citizenship and Immigration), 1999 CanLII 699 (SCC), [1999] 2 SCR 817
• R. v. Jordan, 2016 SCC 27 (CanLII), [2016] 1 SCR 631
• R. v. Friesen, 2020 SCC 9
• R. v. Sullivan, 2020 ONCA 333
• Housen v. Nikolaisen, 2002 SCC 33 (CanLII), [2002] 2 SCR 235
• Dunsmuir v. New Brunswick, 2008 SCC 9 (CanLII), [2008] 1 SCR 190
• Uber Technologies Inc. v. Heller, 2020 SCC 16
• R. v. Grant, 2009 SCC 32 (CanLII), [2009] 2 SCR 353

The cases on the top ten list overall tend to be the same each year, so here is the top ten list for the most accessed decisions that were issued in 2020:

• Ribeiro v Wright, 2020 ONSC 1829
• R. v. Friesen, 2020 SCC 9
• R. v. Sullivan, 2020 ONCA 333
• Uber Technologies Inc. v. Heller, 2020 SCC 16
• Waksdale v. Swegon North America Inc., 2020 ONCA 391
• R. v. Zora, 2020 SCC 14
• Arconti v. Smith, 2020 ONSC 2782
• Nevsun Resources Ltd. v. Araya, 2020 SCC 5
• Reference re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, 2020 ABCA 74
• R. v. Sharma, 2020 ONCA 478

We look forward to seeing what will come in 2021!