As Slaw readers know, the Canadian Legal Information Institute – best known by its acronym CanLII – is Canada’s paramount portal for free access to Canadian legal information. It’s administered by the Federation of Law Societies of Canada and funded by a levy on individual lawyers through the Barreau and the provincial and territorial law societies. As I continually tell legal audiences it’s the best bargain that lawyers get for their fees.

Now Canlii wants our help. Colin Lachance and his colleagues are engaged in a strategic planning exercise and have asked CorbinPartners Inc. to conduct an online survey to . . . [more]

Here are links to the Report and to the Executive Summary of the Independent Civilian Review into Matters Relating to the G20 Summit.

Mr. Morden will be speaking at the release of the Report at Toronto Police Service Headquarters, 40 College Street, 2nd floor at 10 AM. Counsel to the Independent Civilian Review, Ryan Teschner, will be answering questions from the media.

. . . [more]

The most recent annual report of the Law Commission of England is now available.

The report includes highlights of the past year’s work. In particular, the Commission saw two pieces of legislation that derive from its work reach the statute book: the Estates of Deceased Persons (Forfeiture Rule and Law of Succession) Act 2011 and the Consumer Insurance (Disclosure and Representations) Act 2012.

A number of other reports are awaiting implementation in the areas of trust, marriage breakdown, conspiracy, business partnerships, renting homes, etc.

Part 4 of the report is entitled “Measuring Success” and provides interesting stats about the . . . [more]

Unless you have intentionally avoided any and all Canadian news sources this week, then you have been riding the Omni-Bus with everyone else. All the conjecture inspired me to look at the past several Budget Implementation Acts and see how long they have been or in other words how “omni” they have been.

41st Parl-1st Session: Bill C-38: 753 sections.

40-3: Bill C-9: 2208 sections

40-2: Bill C-10: 471 sections

39:2: Bill C-50: 164 sections

39-1: Bill C-52: 154 sections

39:1: Bill C-13: 217 sections

38-1: Bill C-43: 143 sections

37-3: Bill C-30 . . . [more]

Through a recent tweet from Omar Ha-Redeye (@OmarHaRedeye), we learned that private member's Bill C-304, An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act (protecting freedom) passed third reading in the House of Commons without much media coverage, public attention or debate from the opposition parties.

I’m cheered to share a happy note about Library and Archives Canada. Over the past few weeks I’ve enjoyed browsing posts on a pilot service from LAC: thediscoverblog.com, the Library and Archives Canada Blog. Subject areas vary, as they should, though a few recent posts stand out to me in opening up the world of Canadian government and legal information and research.

• Looking for the Debates of the House of Commons (Hansard) online? breaks down and explains what’s accessible online, what is not, and how to access Hansard.
• Finding Aid 300 tells us about a guide to early census

. . . [more]

Raise your hand if you have ever used the interlibrary loan service of a public or educational institution library. Are you sure? This service is fairly transparent and may have included interlibrary borrowing between far flung branches of a regional library system. My little library in the town of Onoway, Alberta – population hovering around 1000 people, offers a library catalogue of nearly 3 milion items. Plenty of these items are shipped using the Library Book Rate, a Canada Post services that has provided a reduced rate for mailing library books since 1939.

In 2008, a Strategic Review of Canada . . . [more]

On May 3, 2012, Ontario’s Bill 13, the Accepting Schools Act, 2011 (which I discussed in a previous Slaw blog post), passed second reading and was referred to the Standing Committee on Social Policy. During committee hearings, the government heard loud and clear that it is important that students who want to establish student-led, single-issue groups, like gay-straight alliances in their schools should be supported and allowed to do so. The government also heard that students should be allowed to call these groups specifically “Gay-Straight Alliances” or other similar names. Hence, the committee made several amendments to Bill 13 . . . [more]

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart, appeared yesterday before the House of Commons access to information, privacy and ethics committee. 

The Commissioner would like PIPEDA to include stronger penalties for privacy violations as an incentive to comply. PIPEDA currently has no financial sanctions. If a violator does not conform to a decision of the Commissioner, the recourse is for the Commissioner to take it to the Federal court, which has powers to order compliance and grant damages.

In part this seems to be driven by “…the apparent disregard that some of these social media companies have shown for Canadian privacy laws.”  . . . [more]

I am spoiled. I admit it. My brothers used to call me Precious – I am sure they were being facetious. This character flaw leads to severe disappointment when tools that I like to use are delayed or disappear.

One of my favourite, and hopefully to reappear soon, tools is the Daily Bill Activity Reports of the Alberta Legislature. Following this link, you may think, “There is a 2012 document at the site, why is she complaining?”

The daily activity report doesn’t include the 28th Legislature. We started the 1st Session of this legislature on May 23, 2012, and . . . [more]

A private member’s bill, Bill 96, the Electronic Commerce Amendment Act, 2012, was introduced on May 17, 2012, to amend Ontario’s Electronic Commerce Act.

The bill does three things:

i) It repeals the exclusion of land transfers from the E-Commerce Act (paragraph 31(1)(d) of the Act, s. 2 of the Bill).

ii) It requires for a land transfer that is electronically signed, that

in light of all the circumstances, including any relevant agreement, the purpose for which the document is created and the time the electronic signature is made,

(a) the electronic signature is reliable for the

. . . [more]

The International Labour Organization (ILO), the agency of the United Nations that deals with labour issues, is seeking ratification of its eight conventions covering fundamental labour standards by 2015. The ILO Core Conventions are as follows: