The Canadian Judicial Council (CJC) has issued ethical guidelines for judges on the use of social media. These guidelines could be a useful template for updating or expanding codes of ethics for tribunal members. In this column I identify some of the key parts of the guidelines as well as some of the shortcomings.

The CJC defines social media, using the Oxford English Dictionary definition as its foundation:

 … social media is defined as “websites and applications which enable users to [access], create and share content or to participate in social networking.” This definition encompasses a wide variety of tools,

Why are some restaurants great, while others are so lousy? The great ones don’t usually have better ingredients in the kitchen, or better written policies, or even more talented people.

Usually, they have better culture. The folks leading and working in great restaurants have developed expectations, attitudes, and social practices that produce terrific results, night after night.

What if the same is true of justice systems? Maybe culture is the reason why some courts, tribunals, and segments of the bar consistently produce substantively just outcomes after processes that are quick, affordable, and procedurally fair. And maybe culture is the . . . [more]

The decision of the Law Society of Alberta in Law Society of Alberta v Shandro (2024 ABLS 14) has received media attention, but primarily for the result. In the process of dismissing three citations against politician Tyler Shandro, the Hearing Committee panel makes some important points about politicians who happen to be lawyers – points that are worthy of more attention independent of the result in the specific matter.

It seems intuitive that law society regulation, including complaints and discipline, could be ‘weaponized’ or otherwise abused as a tool against lawyer-politicians.[1] At the same time, it does . . . [more]

At the LSBC’s AGM tomorrow, several member resolutions will be up for a vote. Among them is a controversial resolution (Resolution 3) submitted by two BC lawyers that calls for changes to certain language in the LSBC’s Indigenous Intercultural Course. The language at issue references an unmarked burial site at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Various legal organizations have condemned Resolution 3 as being, among other things, “alarming Residential School denialism”, “an attack on the principles of Truth and Reconciliation”, an “insidious attempt to distort history” and as “undermin[ing] engagement with Indigenous communities”.

Resolution 3 follows . . . [more]

Earlier this summer, I attended Pride Toronto, an annual festival celebrating the queer community that attracts three million people to its events. Pride Toronto kicks off a wave of pride festivals across Canada throughout the summer.

While I’m not a member of the 2SLGBTQI+ community, it feels very important to show support for those who are, especially given sharply increasing rates of hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation in our country. But like many Canadians, I didn’t always understand this, or know how to be an ally.

Twenty years ago, I was a student at the University of Toronto when . . . [more]

Justice Jamal and the Supreme Court deserve passing marks for their transparency in addressing the request by the Quebec Government that the judge recuse himself in Quebec Secularism Law (Bill 21) case. This is in sharp contrast to the “F” that almost every commentator would give the high court for its dealings with the complaint against Justice Russell Brown in 2023 (see for example this scathing critique from Professor Geoff Sigalet).

Just to remind readers, the Supreme Court’s strategy in that instance was to say nothing and hope no one noticed that Justice Brown did not sit on any cases . . . [more]

For decades, the ideas of equality, justice, and human rights have been the core pillars of Canada’s national identity. However, the reality embedded within our criminal justice system creates a significant obstacle to the actualization of those ideas. Overrepresentation of Indigenous and Black individuals in Canadian jails and prisons, and systemic racism in the criminal justice system, have been well documented in numerous studies and inquiries.[1] The Ontario Court of Appeal acknowledged this systemic issue over thirty years ago in R v Parks, 1993 CanLII 3383. This necessitates a pressing reconsideration of the “public interest” test used . . . [more]

Following ChatGPT’s public release in November 2022, there has been growing discussion about how generative AI intersects with lawyers’ professional obligations as found in codes of conduct. I published some early thoughts on this topic in Slaw.ca (see here and here). Several Canadian law societies have now also published guidance. Providing this sort of information is essential, in my view, for building needed tech literacy in the profession, particularly as AI becomes increasingly integrated into common tools that lawyers already use on a daily basis. Unfortunately, we have already seen that appropriate AI use by lawyers is not inevitable . . . [more]

Singapore’s courts were a mess in the late 1980s. There was a five year backlog of cases, and the average commercial matter took between five and six years to resolve. Hearing dates were being set as much as two years in the future.

These timelines may sound familiar, if you’re involved with Canada’s civil courts. The numbers are eerily similar here right now.

And yet what happened in Singapore in the 1990s should encourage Canadians who want to see speedier access to justice in our country. A dramatic improvement was delivered, in only ten years. By the end of the . . . [more]

Earlier this month, the government of British Columbia introduced Bill 21, the Legal Professions Act. This bill amalgamates the Law Society of British Columbia and the Society of Notaries Public of British Columbia into a new corporation, Legal Professions British Columbia (LPBC), while also creating a licensing and regulation structure for paralegals. It could be the most consequential development in Canadian legal regulation in more than 100 years.

The British Columbia legal profession’s leading organizations (the Law Society, the Canadian Bar Association’s BC branch, and the Trial Lawyers’ Association of BC) strongly oppose Bill 21, with the . . . [more]

Case Commented On: KMN v SZM, 2024 BCCA 70 (CanLII), overturning 2023 BCSC 940 (CanLII)

We have both written previously on myths and stereotypes about intimate partner violence (IPV), one of the most common of which is that women make false or exaggerated claims of violence to gain an advantage in family law disputes (see here and here). In KMN v SZM, 2024 BCCA 70 (CanLII), the British Columbia Court of Appeal (BCCA) recognized the existence of this myth and the need for courts to avoid making assumptions that perpetuate it, holding that it is . . . [more]

The Hon. Roy McMurtry had a stellar career, serving as Chief Justice of Ontario, Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Commissioner of the Canadian Football League, and Attorney General of Ontario. When he passed away in March, many of the tributes rightly focussed on the critical role he played in reaching “the kitchen accord” which led to the patriation of the Constitution with the enactment of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, section 35 and the notwithstanding clause. Other tributes noted his participation in the landmark case of Halpern v. Canada (2003), which legalized same-sex marriage.

Because McMurtry . . . [more]