In light of the most recent round of federal judicial appointments announced last week, I wasn’t surprised to find 24 women and just one man attending the Manitoba Bar Association’s lunch & learn event, So You Want to be a Judge? earlier this week. The event, co-sponsored by the Women Lawyers Forum and Equality Issues section focused on providing practical information on the process of seeking an appointment to the provincial or federal bench.

Panelists from the Manitoba Court of Appeal, Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench and Provincial Court of Manitoba spoke frankly about their own experiences on the bench . . . [more]

BrightPlanet has created a new online product called “BlueJay,” which it is advertising as a "Law Enforcement Twitter Crime Scanner." The tool allows users to monitor virtually every single public tweet published by Twitter users in real time for indicators of crime or wrongdoing. Users can set up virtual perimeters or geo-fences to track tweets specific to those areas. BrightPlanet’s main business is “open source intelligence”: searching the “deep web”—those parts of the World Wide Web that are public but which regular search engines cannot reach.

On August 8, 2013, we wrote about Quebec’s New Rules and Procedures for the province’s Immigration and Skilled Workers Program and the significant changes to the program’s selection criteria. As indicated by the Quebec government, "All applications will be processed according to the new rules in effect as of August 1, 2013, with the exception of those for which processing began prior to that date."

The other day, I was sitting with Phil Brown, of the Law Society of Upper Canada, trying to solve the world’s problems – as we are wont to do from time to time.

I ventured that one of the constraints to access to justice is a lawyer’s overhead. And a large part of that overhead in large- and medium-sized firms, is lawyer salary.

Then I thought, how crazy is it that we live in a world where lawyers can’t survive on a salary of $250,000.00 per year – keeping in mind that this amount is about 5 times what the . . . [more]

I am a landlord. My spouse and I try very hard to be great landlords, fair, responsive, and reasonable. We have excellent tenants. Responsible, reasonable, and fair. I honestly have no idea how I would deal with a situation such as the on recently in the media from Calgary. According to various media reports (here, here, here, and here) a landlord C is having issues with a tenant P who has claimed that the rental property he lives in is a sovereign embassy.

The matter crosses all kinds of legislative paths, the Residential Tenancies Act, . . . [more]

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013, Quebec’s Parti Quebecois government led by Pauline Marois released its proposal for a Charter of Quebec Values, which would decree the religious neutrality of the state and its employees and management of religious accommodation. This is not the province’s first attempt. In 2009 and 2011, Marois presented bills “to assert the fundamental values of the Québec Nation,” which we wrote about previously on Slaw. Going further back, the Quebec government says these measures sprouted naturally from the seed planted over 50 years ago in the Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille).

On the website concerning the Québec Charter of Values you’ll find a statement from the minister, Bernard Drainville, and, if you follow the arrows at the bottom of each screen, the desideratum of “clear rules for everyone“, an “affirmation of Québec values” (“By affirming these values, we are proposing to build a strong Québec identity, whether one was born here or elsewhere.”), the principle of state neutrality, and, last, “five proposals” the government is making. One of these is the one that’s received most attention in the press: to “limit the wearing . . . [more]

The European Court of Human Rights is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the entry into force of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was signed in Rome on November 1, 1950, by 12 member states of the Council of Europe, and came into force on September 3, 1953. The Convention was one of the first instruments to give effect and binding force to certain of the rights stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Last month, the Manitoba Court of Appeal commented on the practice in some Manitoba courts of ordering charitable donations be made as a part of sentencing in criminal or other quasi-criminal proceedings.

The Court, in R. v. Choi (J.W.), 2013 MBCA 75 (CanLII) was considering an appeal of sentence by the Crown from a conviction under s. 124(1)(c) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act relating to the defendant’s illegal employment of six foreign nationals. The sentence imposed by the lower Court was an 18-month conditional discharge including supervised probation and a condition that Choi:

Make a charitable

. . . [more]

Yesterday, retired judge Dennis O’Connor resigned from heading up the Toronto Police use of force review. He did so because of a perceived conflict of interest over his role at Borden Ladner Gervais LLP; BLG represents the Toronto Police when they are sued.

According to the Toronto Sun, O’Connor said in a statement, “We were surprised by the objections raised by lawyers for some of the victims’ families to my conducting the review. We had thought that I could structure and conduct the review to satisfy any concern but apparently not….. I regret that this issue has arisen but . . . [more]

We’ve referred to the matter of governments spying on citizens a number of times here on Slaw, particularly in relation to the feebleness of the “it’s only metadata” excuse. If you’d like more confirmation that metadata has the power to breach privacy in a serious way, have a look at the affidavit — the “declaration,” to be precise — by Princeton computer science prof, Edward W. Felten filed in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit. Professor Felten takes you through the process step by step, intending, of course, to educate the court about these technological matters.

There’s perhaps a natural . . . [more]

I’d like to use this space to profile an upcoming event hosted by The Public Legal Education Association of Canada/L’Association canadienne des organismes d’éducation et d’information juridique . On October 9 and 10, 2013, the National PLEAC Conference and AGM will take place in Vancouver.

Wednesday, October 9 will see the AGM and the business meetings of the members of PLEAC/ACOEIJ, along with a social celebrating public legal education and, specifically, PLEI in BC.

Scheduled for Thursday, October 10, is what looks to be a stimulating and worthy event called Opening Doors. This day is planned to be

a public

. . . [more]