Upon arrest or detention, a police officer must advise a detainee of their s. 10 Charter right to retain and instruct counsel without delay. Does this right apply if a person is “apprehended” and taken involuntarily to a health facility for a psychiatric assessment? Presumably it does: if the individual is not free to leave the officer’s custody or refuse the examination, then their individual liberty is clearly suspended by a state authority. This is the very definition of a “detention” under the Charter: R v Grant. Yet, the case law implies that officers may be failing to advise . . . [more]

Fellow Slaw contributor Kim Nayer wrote about QPLegalEze’s imminent dismantlement back in April 2014. Her post, titled “Goodbye QPLegalEze; Welcome Open Law“, heralded an end to an era of embargoed legal information, and hinted at the promise of a more democratic trend—one where the government lets the law become knowable even in the absence of our wallets.

Some goodbyes take longer than others. 20-odd months later, however, it really does feel like the house has cleared out. The repository of BC’s laws (various enactments, historical tables, ministerial orders archives, and that sort of thing) which was once kept  . . . [more]

By Nora Rock, corporate writer at LAWPRO.

A personal property security interest can’t be perfected if it’s registered in the wrong jurisdiction. Pinning down the appropriate jurisdiction for registration of a non-possessory interest in an intangible (like intellectual property), a good used in more than one jurisdiction (like a transport truck), or an instrument (like a lease) has proven to be surprisingly hard, due to ambiguous language in PPS statutes across the country.

The version currently in force of s. 7(1) of the Ontario Personal Property Security Act provides that the validity and perfection of a registration of an interest . . . [more]

Compassionate care benefits are available to employees who have to take time away from work to care for a sick family member who has a significant risk of death. Changes to the availability of compassionate care benefits under the Employment Insurance Act are set to come into force in the New Year. The changes, which were introduced as part of the 2015 Budget, will increase the maximum amount of compassionate care benefits from six weeks to twenty-six weeks. The changes come into force on January 3, 2016.

Compassionate care benefits complement compassionate care leave, which is provided for in provincial . . . [more]

Tips in Ontario’s service industry are currently divided up in a variety of ways: they can be kept by the specific employee who receives them, pooled to share with other employees, or pooled to share with other employees and the employer. An act entitled Protecting Employees’ Tips Act, 2015 amends Ontario’s Employment Standards Act to prohibit employers from taking a share of tips.

Passed yesterday, the Act will take effect in six months. While there will be a few situations in which employers may be permitted to share in tips (such as when the employer regularly performs the same work . . . [more]

The purpose of government, when it is functioning properly, is to pass laws. These laws should be carefully contemplated, debated, and revised before drafting.

But sometimes there’s a greater urgency in this function, which has arose in the aftermath of Carter v. Canada, where the Court ruled in February of this year:

Section 241 (b) and s. 14  of the Criminal Code  unjustifiably infringe s. 7  of the Charter  and are of no force or effect to the extent that they prohibit physician-assisted death for a competent adult person who (1) clearly consents to the termination

Governments have been steadily increasing statutory leaves of absence entitlements to help employees deal with various personal issues without fear of losing their jobs. The Manitoba government is raising the bar by introducing groundbreaking proposed changes to the Employment Standards Code that would give victims of domestic violence the right to time off work without fear of job loss, give employees a new leave for long-term illness and injury, and extend the length of leave for compassionate care. . . . [more]

Apologies to other Slaw readers in advance. This post is mostly for BC lawyers interested in using CanLII to note up specific Supreme Court Family Rules. I shared these tips recently in a paper for a CLE and thought the general principle or method might be helpful to a broader audience too.

I’ll preface this post to say that 95% of the time, CanLII is a simply phenomenal tool. Deeply customizable search operators and a clean interface/search template. It’s a killer app for lawyers and others seeking to know the law. It is, however, strangely ill-suited to note up specific . . . [more]

A Toronto web design company recently published a job posting for a writing job indicating that “female candidates are preferred”, seemingly time-warping back to the Mad Men era… Specifically, the position was for a content writer and search-engine optimization specialist on LinkedIn. However, the posting also indicated that the successful candidate will need to fulfill the “responsibilities of a receptionist, so female candidates are preferred.”

Not surprisingly, the job posting has attracted negative attention on twitter and news outlets have picked up the story. The company responded on Twitter and LinkedIn by stating that they “did not mean to discriminate . . . [more]

The Ministry of Economic Development, Employment and Infrastructure has proposed changes to the Customer Service Standard and Integrated Accessibility Standards regulations under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). If approved, the changes will be enacted on July 1, 2016, and take immediate effect.

This proposal includes incorporating the Customer Service Standard into the Integrated Accessibility Standards Regulation and making changes to requirements of the Customer Service Standard (see details below). . . . [more]

The preamble to Manitoba’s new Restorative Justice Act sets the foundation for the provisions of the Act, in force today:

…WHEREAS there are circumstances when the interests of justice are served by having an offender and the victim of the unlawful conduct or other community representatives find a resolution that promotes public safety by providing healing, reparation and re-integration into the community outside the traditional criminal prosecution process;

AND WHEREAS unlawful conduct by some offenders arises out of mental health conditions, addictions or other behavioural issues and there are instances when it is more appropriate to address these issues rather

The Manitoba Customer Service Accessibility Standard (CSAS) under the Accessibility for Manitobans Act (AMA) came into effect November 1, 2015. The CSAS requires all of Manitoba’s public, private and non-profit organizations with one or more employees that provide goods or services directly to the public or to another organization in Manitoba, to establish and implement measures, policies and practices to remove barriers for access to the goods or services it provides. . . . [more]