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. The Court 2. Canadian Securities Law 3. Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style 4. Robeside Assistance 5. Michael Geist
The Court
Delete at Your Own Risk: Spoliation in SS&C Technologies v BNY Mellon
Destroying evidence should never leave a party better off. In SS&C Technologies Canada Corp v Bank of New York Mellon Corp, 2026 SCC 29 [SS&C Technologies], the Supreme Court of Canada (“SCC”) considered how courts should address situations when a party intentionally deletes evidence relevant to the calculation of damages. For the first time in more than a century, the Court clarified the law of “spoliation,” the intentional destruction or concealment of evidence to affect litigation (SS&C Technologies, paras 1-2). It held that once spoliation is proven, courts must presume the destroyed evidence would have been unfavourable to the “spoliator” (SS&C Technologies, paras 4, 79). Unless the presumption is rebutted, courts must draw an adverse inference that fills the evidentiary gap (SS&C Technologies, paras 9, 81). I suggest that while the Court shows how far that inference can go in the most severe cases, it leaves trial judges unsure when to go that far. …
Canadian Securities Law
TSX Proposes Amendments to Continued Listing Requirements
The Toronto Stock Exchange (“TSX”) has published for comment proposed amendments (the “Proposed Amendments”) to its continued listing requirements (“CLRs”), which have not been updated substantively in over two decades. The Proposed Amendments are intended to mode…
Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style
Thinking of moving in-house? It’s not what you have in mind
My very first “real” law job after getting called to the Ontario bar, back in 2015, was at a small firm. One hallway. Four offices. Small. Because I was new, impressionable and not the least bit jaded yet, I took what everyone told me with no grains of salt. I was salt-less. Shortly after I joined, one of the associates, someone I really liked, left to move in-house. Since I was new to practice, I didn’t have a sense of what that meant. Then someone told me that the associate was far too young to take a “sunset job” and that in-house is where you go when you “can’t cut it in real practice.” Less than a year later, I went in-house myself. Ironically, it was only then that I felt my career had truly started and that I began to develop into the lawyer I am today. …
Robeside Assistance
Recently Published Ottawa Decisions
Abughoush v. Sharif (2026 ONSC 5535) In a family law case conference, the court held it could make a contested temporary parenting order on proper notice in exceptional circumstances. Applying the Divorce Act best-interests factors, it ordered week-about parenting mainly in Ottawa, with a mid-week visit and permitted Ontario travel on notice, pending a relocation motion. Associate Justice I. Kamal …
The House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage conducted an extensive study on the effects of influencers and social media on children and adolescents over the past year and released its report in June. The committee, which will soon lead the review of Bill C-34, produced 13 recommendations including a legally enforceable duty of care, an independent regulator with monetary penalties, safety-by-design requirements, defined categories of harm, and the inclusion of AI chatbots and deepfakes. Given the overlap with the government’s social media bill, it is no surprise that the government endorsed many of the recommendations this week. There is an outlier, however: the committee considered two potential bans, one on targeted ads for kids and the other on underage access to social media. The committee recommended the ad ban and stopped short of the social media one, but the government reversed the approach, declining the ad ban while legislating the social media ban for under-16s. …
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*Randomness here is created by Random.org and its list randomizing function.
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