As a result of the provincial election this past week, the majority Ontario Liberal Party government will reintroduce the budget they had proposed which had triggered the election. There are a number of features in this budget which focus on the legal system.

The first is increases to legal aid, by increasing the threshold for income eligibility, an increase that has not occurred since the 1990s. This initiative has been commended by the Criminal Lawyers Association,

“We applaud the government’s recognition of the importance of Ontario’s legal aid system,” said Anthony Moustacalis, President of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association.

In the last couple of weeks, two laws with contentious moral underpinnings have made headlines. The first is Ottawa’s proposed prostitution laws that criminalize the purchase of sexual services and much of the communication, including advertising, which surrounds it. The other is Quebec’s law legalizing physician-assisted dying, adopted following a free vote with support from all parties in the National Assembly. Both laws raise serious concerns as to their constitutionality and raise an important point about law-making in Canada today: Are our elected lawmakers doing their constitutional due diligence?

Bill-36 was the federal government’s response to last year’s Bedford decision, . . . [more]

How do we understand bad things done to women by men? Through the few men who do them (#Notallmen)? Through misogyny in our culture as a whole? Through the experience of all women living with the risk that such bad things can happen (#Yesallwomen)? The ferocity of recent internet debate on this topic clouds the possibility that harm done by men to women should be understood as about all these things: the men who inflict it, the society in which it occurs and the lives of the women who live with the possibility of that threat.

In this column I . . . [more]

Readers have until June 30 to vote online for the winner of the 2014 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. The prize, which is sponsored by ABA Journal and the University of Alabama School of Law, is intended to recognize a work of fiction that best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society. The three finalists this year are:

• Ronald H. Balson for Once We Were Brothers
• John Grisham for Sycamore Row
• Elizabeth Strout for The Burgess Boys

The prize was first handed out in 2011. The winner that year was John Grisham for The Confession.

Michael Connelly  . . . [more]

In five days, Justice Clément Gascon of the Cour d’Appel will assume Justice Fish’s seat on the Supreme Court.

The announcement from the Prime Minister’s office is terse:

« Je suis ravi d’annoncer la nomination de M. le juge Clément Gascon à la Cour suprême du Canada. M. le juge Gascon, qui siège actuellement à la Cour d’appel du Québec, possède un important bagage d’expérience et de connaissances juridiques dont profitera grandement cette importante institution canadienne. Sa nomination survient au terme de vastes consultations menées auprès d’éminents membres du milieu juridique du Québec. » –

There’s an airline that flies to northern Manitoba centres that has recently reduced its scheduled flights to and from Winnipeg. While one might not necessarily expect an airline schedule change to have an impact on access to justice, it’s possible that it just may.

Flights from Winnipeg to this centre depart each morning, allowing judges on circuit and lawyers from Winnipeg to get to court on time in the northern centre. The scheduled daily return flights to Winnipeg now depart either in the late morning or well-past dinnertime.

Is there a potential effect on access to justice? There could be, . . . [more]

I am still thinking about the messages that came out of last week’s Canadian Association of Law Libraries conference. So much of it revolved around the role of library professionals. Some of my key take-aways from my week in Winnipeg:

• Things continue to change. Business as we knew it has been permanently disrupted. Lawyers, law firms, legal organizations and law libraries need to change or they will be left behind.
• Lawyers do not hold all the answers; library staff (who are more familiar with process) could have many of the answers, and there is an opportunity to get involved at

I’m not sure it’s wise, for my first post on Slaw, to discuss a topic somewhat outside my comfort zone. But having just completed reading the 15,000-word cover story of the June issue of the Atlantic, by Ta-Nehisi Coates, I’m finding it hard to resist.

For those who haven’t read it, TNC’s essay is an introspective look at the United States’ “national economic plunder” of African-Americans. That plunder, as he describes it, was carried out over centuries. Worse yet – and this is the part that is most striking about the essay – much of it was rooted in deliberate . . . [more]

Twenty-month old Jaylene Redhead was killed by her mother on June 29, 2009 while both were resident in a second-stage housing facility in Winnipeg. Jaylene had been apprehended from her mother’s care at birth by Awasis Agency of Northern Manitoba but had been returned to her mother’s care at the Native Women’s Transition Centre in the months before her death.

The Inquest Report of Judge Lawrence Allen into her death, released May 23, reveals the awful details of this child’s short life. The inquest was called in 2011 under the provisions of Manitoba’s Fatality Inquiries Act to:

• inquire into the

The UK Court of Appeal last week overturned a decision staying a complex financial fraud prosecution on the ground that no suitably qualified lawyer was willing to be retained to defend the case at the reduced compensation rates being offered by the State.

The UK Ministry of Justice had previously announced its intention to cut by 30% the rate of remuneration to counsel in such cases. None of the respondents were able to find counsel to instruct.

The judge of first instance concluded, “to allow the State an adjournment to put right its failure to provide the necessary resources to . . . [more]

Dean Beeby, “Justice Canada Chops Research Budget by $1.2 Million” (May 12, 2014) Globe and Mail online.

This report solidifies what librarians and critics of this government’s approach to evidence, information, data and research have been decrying since the discontinuation of the long-form census; information and data is to be manipulated so as to support the government’s political agenda.

“Previous legal research in the department sometimes caught senior officials “off-guard … and may even have run contrary to government direction,” says an internal report for deputy minister William Pentney.”

Some past projects have “at times left the impression that . . . [more]

The Canadian Bar Association, including 11 former presidents of the CBA, last week came to the support of the Chief Justice of Canada following recent claims by the Prime Minister that the Chief Justice attempted inappropriate conversations with him in 2013.

Among other media appearances, a statement was published in the Globe and Mail on Tuesday. From the statement:

The recent comments by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, claiming that the Chief Justice of Canada attempted an inappropriate conversation with him, demonstrate a disrespect by the executive branch for the judicial branch of our constitutional democracy, and for the Chief