A post earlier this week on In Custodia Legis, the blog of the Law Library of Congress in Washington, explained that the Australian federal legislative website ComLaw and the New Zealand legislative website were offering official versions of their laws.

In other words, the sites guarantee that the text that a searcher finds there (usually the PDF version) is a correct statement of the law and is admissible as evidence in court. Traditionally, only the print version of legislation from a government printer is official.

Many people are surprised to find out how few electronic versions of laws . . . [more]

The Minimum Wage Advisory Panel's final report was tabled with the Ontario government on Monday January 27, 2014. The report points out that the minimum wage is not solely a statistical or economic debate, it is also a benchmark, “a wage floor” that establishes a bare minimum for society. While the minimum wage cannot do it alone—child care, affordable housing, tax credits and tax exemptions are also essential—it is also a key component of any realistic anti-poverty strategy, no matter how blunt or inefficient it might be.

Access to justice is a quasi-constitutional right in Quebec where the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms guarantees “a full and equal, public and fair hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal.” However, numerous stakeholders, including many in the legal community share a growing concern that access to justice is increasingly posing challenges to those who need it, and obstacles such as time, expense and representation stand in the way of securing this right for all Quebec citizens.

Although Quebec’s Bill 60 is before committee it is already coming under immense scrutiny by the public and legal experts. This week two reports were leaked to La Presse, prompting the opposition Liberals to demand disclosure of the legal opinions behind the Parti Québécois initiative to enact a Charter of Values.

The legal opinions are likely to be protected by parliamentary privilege, and Bernard Drainville, the Minister responsible for Democratic Institutions and Active Citizenship, still appears confident that the Bill will pass constitutional challenges. Once again, he cited the support offered for the Bill by former Supreme Court Justice, Claire . . . [more]

I’m on for a little rant today but this is significant topic, courtesy of one of my LRW students conducting some research on the Nadon appointment to the SCC (on the plus side this does drive home the point I continually try to make that you cannot exclusively rely on one source or the web all the time). Interestingly, I thought we were getting rid of all the print government publications because the Interwebs are so much more efficient and effective? Well try and find SC 2013, c 40 which received Royal Assent on December 12, 2013, over a month . . . [more]

Part 2: The failure of the Federal/Provincial Task Force on Uniform Rules of Evidence to have its Uniform Evidence Act enacted, because the piecemeal amendment of the law of evidence is preferred

Late in 1977, because of the “mixed” reception that the Law Reform Commission of Canada’s proposal for an Evidence Code to replace the Canada Evidence Act had received nationally, the Federal/Provincial Task Force on Uniform Rules of Evidence had been formed under the sponsorship of the Uniform Law Conference of Canada (the ULCC), which body provides the mechanisms and procedures by which federal, provincial, and territorial government . . . [more]

Yesterday, Simon prepared a kind post to introduce me (again) to Slaw.ca.

I plan to post about civil litigation issues, class actions, and advocacy.

My first contribution is about Ontario’s Class Proceedings Act, 1992.

Last week, the Law Commission of Ontario released a list of issues it will consider to reform class action law in Ontario. The scope of its review will be broad, ranging from improving “take-up rates” by class members, canvassing different funding options for class actions, and providing guidance for when national class actions are appropriate.

For me, the topic that is most interesting about . . . [more]

We sometimes hear of bizarre laws still on the books. I had always assumed these were tucked away in obscure legislation and never applied. Not so, as many very surprising laws are contained in documents such as the Canadian Criminal Code. Here are some of the most surprising ones.

Those of us who have studied the Criminal Code know how complex it can be. What we may not have noticed is that it contains sections which appear to date from another time and place. This cannot be a product of the Code not having been amended in a while, . . . [more]

Part 1: The failure of the Law Reform Commission of Canada’s Evidence Code

For decades experts in the law of evidence have called for comprehensive legislative reform of the law of evidence in Canada, but it hasn’t happened. The great success of the U.S. Federal Rules of Evidence (the FRE), operative from July 1, 1975 (but from Dec. 1, 2011, known as the Restyled Federal Rules of Evidence), makes Canada’s failure to enact a true code of evidence a considerable loss to its administration of justice. Almost all U.S. states have adopted the FRE as their state codes of . . . [more]

We all receive – and many of us send – electronic holiday greetings this time of year. They can range from a simple email to animated cards to elaborate videos.

Next December the new anti-spam law (aka CASL) will be in force. Depending on how we send holiday greetings, what is in them, and who we send them to, CASL will act like the Grinch to classify some of them as spam, and make the sender subject to a massive fine or other remedies.

Figuring out whether a Christmas card is spam, like any other electronic message, will not be . . . [more]

The Court of Appeal has unanimously ruled that a private school’s decision to expel a student is not subject to judicial review.

In September, 2012, the Divisional Court quashed Appleby College’s decision to expel a student on his last day of high school for smoking pot in his residence. A quick refresher on the facts of the case can be found in a post I wrote last November.

In a nutshell, Mr. Setia was caught smoking pot in his residence at Appleby College (a prestigious Ontario private high school) on the day before his final exam of high school. . . . [more]

The electronic documents part of the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) generally operates on an opt-in basis. Thus, for example, s. 41:

A requirement under a provision of a federal law for a document to be in writing is satisfied by an electronic document if

(a) the federal law or the provision is listed in Schedule 2 or 3; and

(b) the regulations respecting the application of this section to the provision have been complied with.

To date, only the Federal Real Property and Federal Immovables Act and a small part of . . . [more]