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. Canadian Class Actions Monitor 2. Know How 3. Canadian Appeals Monitor 4. David Whelan 5. Welcome to the Food Court

Canadian Class Actions Monitor
Submission to Finance Canada as part of its Pre-budget Consultations in Advance of the upcoming 2025 Fall Federal Budget

There has been a new development in a class action that we previously covered (see: Recklessness as a Willful Violation of Privacy: B.C. Court of Appeal Decision has Implications for Private and Public Sector Organizations). The development is G.D. v. South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority, 2026 BCSC 773 and it has implications for public and private sector organizations that collect, store, or manage sensitive personal information in British Columbia. The decision suggests that plaintiffs may be able to advance statutory privacy claims beyond certification based solely on allegations of inadequate safeguarding, with “access” being interpreted broadly at the certification stage. It also reinforces the possibility of aggregate damages awards despite the absence of individualized proof of loss. …

Know How
Legal Research Lifelines in the Age of Information Overload

We are revisiting an older post in our Legal Research Survival Guide, Part 10 – Lifelines and Last Tips, and it occurred to us that Tip #4 is especially worth highlighting in today’s context of information overload. Tip #4 – Use a lifeline has only become more relevant since the Guide was written in 2020. With the sheer volume of legal information now available, and the pressure students and junior lawyers face to find reliable answers quickly, it’s easy to lose time going down the wrong research path. …

Canadian Appeals Monitor
Civil Appeals by the Numbers: The Court of Appeal for Ontario Releases a Decade of Data

On July 2, 2026, the Court of Appeal for Ontario released its first annual report in over a decade. The report, covering the period 2023–2024, provides insights on how Canada’s busiest provincial appellate court is functioning and what parties who come before it can expect. The report also highlights several practical takeaways for parties considering or engaged in an appeal, including how long the appeal process typically takes, how often civil appeals typically succeed, how rarely leave to appeal is granted, the growing presence of self-represented litigants, and the court’s continued move toward digital filing through its new portal. …

David Whelan
Like A Good Neighbor

I had the lawn mower out over the weekend. We had a brief respite from the heat and the rain and the new sod we’d put down needed a trim. As I was finishing up, my neighbor came out with his mower and a similar mindset and we got to chatting. We’ve lived here for over a year now and we are fortunate to have good neighbors. I picked up a bit of scuttlebutt about the neighborhood and what his family was up to, swapped opinions on lawn hardware, and then both got back to our chores. I’m grateful for a good neighbor. We are constantly in contact with people in our lives and we can’t always choose who we live next to and work beside. When those relationships are sour, they can rot everything else. …

Welcome to the Food Court
Codex CCFL49: What Came Out of Five Days in Ottawa

Allergen statements, bilingual claims, country-of-origin language, and joint-presentation rules for multipacks are some of the rules that decide whether a product can sit on a shelf in Canada, or whether the company selling it is exposed to enforcement, recall liability, or a Competition Bureau referral. Many of those rules arrived in Canada through the Codex Alimentarius Commission years before they appeared in the Food and Drug Regulations or the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations. Codex sets international labelling standards through its Committee on Food Labelling. Canada hosts that committee, has done so for decades, and chairs its sessions. The 49th Session of CCFL met in Ottawa from May 11 to 15, 2026. …

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