On September 11, 2008 N.S., a sexual assault complainant sat in a court room in Ontario and struggled to explain to a judge why she shouldn’t have to remove her niqab, face veil, while she testified. “My face” she insisted, “is not going to show any signs of – it is not going to help, it really won’t.” N.S., though unbeknownst to her at the time, had just pushed up against one of the most strongly held beliefs of our legal system – that faces ought to be visible in court and that credibility could be determined by observing a . . . [more]

In light of what’s been happening to Canada’s correctional system, it’s disconcerting to listen to today’s CBC Sunday Edition interview by Michael Enright of Marianne Vollan, who is the Director General of Correctional Services of Norway. Disconcerting because she lays out a theory of sentencing and imprisonment that is radically at odds with the one implemented here under the present federal government — and, to make it even more vexing for me, a theory that she says Norway borrowed from us back in the days when we were interested in evidence-based policies.

Here’s that interview and a link to an . . . [more]

Recently a precedent setting family law case involving a sperm donor claiming to be a parent of a child born to lesbian mothers was settled out of court. Not unlike many non-traditional families the women in this northern Ontario case conceived a child by way of donor sperm, but precedent setting in that the sperm donor applied to the courts to be declared a parent and for liberal access rights to the child.

Settling out of court is great for the parties involved who got to determine the details of their settlement agreement and put an end to long and . . . [more]

Earlier this month, Kirk Makin of the Globe and Mail scooped an announcement of a major set of Reports on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters, an inititaitive that started with the Chief Justice’s challenge to the Canadian Bar Association last summer.

The four Reports from Working Groups chaired by Justice Thomas Cromwell were officially released this morning:
Backgrounder
Report of the Court Processes Simplification Working Group
Report of the Access to Legal Services Working Group
Report of the Prevention, Triage and Referral Working Group
Report of the Family Justice Working Group

And a background literature review: Family . . . [more]

Slaw has just received word that the national Action Committee on Access to Justice in Civil and Family Matters has placed four working group reports online. The Committee, established by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Beverley McLachlin, and chaired by Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell, was, in the words of the Backgrounder, also online, “convened to address the urgent and multiple issues surrounding access to justice in civil and family matters.”

The four reports made available are:

• Report of the Court Processes Simplification Working Group (29 pp.)
• Report of the Access to Legal Services Working Group (30

. . . [more]

Slaw readers might like to take a look at Senate bill S-7, the Combating Terrorism Act, now before the House for third reading, a bill that proposes to abridge our civil liberties to a degree. As is often the case with bills the main purpose of which is to amend existing legislation, the text of the bill itself is nearly incomprehensible on its own unless you’re familiar with the relevant area of law.

The Globe and Mail has an article in this morning’s paper that will give you a brief sense of the bill’s main incursions into your Charter . . . [more]

Law Day is being celebrated across the country this week to mark the 31^st anniversary of the signing of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms on April 17, 1982. The Canadian Bar Association introduced Law Day one year later and has since been promoting events to mark it across the country.

In Winnipeg, Law Day celebrations took place this past Sunday with an Open House and tours at the Law Courts Complex, a special sitting of the Citizenship Court, student mock trials, legal information sessions and displays.

I’ve been a Law Day volunteer a number of times, greeting members . . . [more]

B.C. is the home of innovation when it comes to law in this country, moving ahead with new ideas and new ways of providing its citizens with access to justice. We’ve talked about the foray into online dispute resolution and about the Ministry of Justice two-part White Paper on Justice Reform, to mention only two developments. And just yesterday Chief Justice Robert Bauman made a public statement predicting dire things for law and lawyers if significant changes aren’t made and made quickly, something rare for a sitting judge.

As significant is a quiet development we’ve not yet noticed on . . . [more]

A few comments with respect to access to justice caught my attention in the recent Manitoba Queen’s Bench (Family Division) decision in Price v. Laflamme, 2013 MBQB 25 (CanLII). In the course of providing reasons for a decision on costs at the conclusion of a lengthy trial, the trial judge noted that the conduct of the petitioner’s conduct in the matter effectively discouraged any possibility of resolution of the matter. He noted that:

Implicit in that conduct may have been a desire to exhaust the resources of the respondent/father in pursuing his position. No stone was left unturned. No examination

. . . [more]

Nothing in the Law Society of Upper Canada’s Rules of Professional Conduct places much real pressure on the profession to incorporate equality in a meaningful way. If law schools cannot instill the true worth of equality into the minds of future lawyers, the expectation for a truly diverse Canadian legal profession becomes no more than an unrealistic pipe dream. By presenting ethical training as the sort of “easy” course students take in order to graduate, law schools may simply be creating new lawyers who are, as Professor Rosemary Cairns Way described, only “rhetorically committed” to equality.

Handbooks for equality: Hiring . . . [more]

On April 1, 2013, the federal government launched the new Social Security Tribunal, which aims to simplify the process of appealing government decisions related to benefits under the Employment Insurance Act, Canada Pension Plan and Old Age Security Act.

In 2008, a woman was stopped on the streets of Ottawa, questioned, and arrested for public intoxication. When inside the cellblocks, she was restrained by four male officers. Sergeant Steve Desjourdy then used scissors to cut her shirt and bra off. She was then left topless in a cell for three hours.

Desjourdy was initially cleared of any misconduct by the Ottawa Police Service’s internal investigation, but a second investigation by the province’s Special Investigations Unit resulted in a charge of sexual assault being laid against him.

In a verdict issued this morning, Desjourdy was acquitted of sexual assault. Despite . . . [more]