Monday’s Mix

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. Double Aspect 2. Condo Adviser 3. Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style 4. Excess Copyright 5. David Whelan

Double Aspect
The Kiwis Do It Better

I have blogged about the issue of imprisonment to life without parole, in name or in effect, for some years — namely, since the Superior Court of Quebec held that doing so was unconstitutional in R v Bissonnette, 2019 QCCS 354. Maxime St-Hilaire wrote about that slightly manic judgment here, and about the Quebec Court of Appeal’s take on the issue in Bissonnette v R, 2020 QCCA 1585, here. Finally, I wrote about the Supreme Court’s undiginified performance in this case, R v Bissonnette, 2022 SCC 23, here. Meanwhile, …Condo Adviser
’Twas the Night Before Compliance: A Condo Christmas Tale

Gather ‘round, children. It’s that time of year again for your Condo Adviser Christmas story.Snow had been piling up on Condo Land. Lights had been twinkling and, in many condo lobbies, stood a crooked Christmas tree that had seen far too many AGMs. Somewhere above Condo Land, far, far above, in the magical kingdom of the Condo Authority Tribunal, an exhausted adjudicator sat at a desk made of recycled paper proxies. There she was sorting through the typical holiday condo disputes. You know, the classics: …

Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style
The great bar exam debate

The Ontario bar exam is a peculiar test. It’s open-book, multiple-choice, time-limited and incredibly long. You can’t practise law in the province until you’ve passed it. Some people like it that way. In their view, the exam is an impartial tool that neatly measures the practice-readiness of a new lawyer. Others insist that it measures something far less important: whether someone can swiftly answer hundreds of questions under the weight of an arbitrary deadline.Evidently, the critics have like-minded allies inside the Law Society of Ontario. Back in September, the regulator issued a report with a seemingly bold recommendation: …

Excess Copyright
The Proposed Artist’s Resale Right – A Bad Solution in Search of a Problem?

The recent federal government budget proposed an artist’s resale right (“ARR”) in its 2024 Budget. The details are unknown, and there was no mention of it in the budget implementation legislation Bill C-15 tabled on November 4, 2025.The good news about this proposal is that it is, so far, the ONLY visible copyright arrow in this government’s current quiver. For the time being, we have been spared any disastrous proposals to cut back on fair dealing, to make Copyright Board tariffs mandatory, or other potentially dangerous proposals – despite the best efforts of the usual lobbyists and collective madness. Here’s what Budget 2025 had to say: …

David Whelan
The Chimera of the Self-Hosted Digital Library

Someone posted a long thread to a micro blogging site I am on about the self-hosted library. I am not going to link to it because it’s well-meaning and also not a one-off. These posts appear periodically when people with technology acumen experience the epiphany of financial extraction in the information world. They realize that libraries are intermediaries between the creator and the consumer, a role we share with information publishers. They devise a technology stack that would allow libraries to deliver digital resources directly to patrons, just as they do with print books. Their solution is tech-centric because, as it so often is, the technology is the least complicated part of a solution. …

_________________________

*Randomness here is created by Random.org and its list randomizing function.