On the 20th anniversary of the deadly Westray explosion that killed 26 miners in Nova Scotia, the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC) has released a guide for investigating corporate criminal negligence in the event of a serious injury or fatality in a workplace

The Quebec provincial government has filed today a reference motion with the Quebec Court of Appeal regarding the legality of Bill C-7 (see article here).

Bill C-7, or in its full title, an Act respecting the selection of senators and amending the Constitution Act, 1867 in respect of senate term limits, seeks, as it name suggests, to modify the way the country selects senators and how long they can sit for. The federal government would select its senators from a list of nominees proposed by the provinces, following an election in each of those provinces. Senators named after . . . [more]

The Toronto Lawyers Association (TLA) has raised an alarm over proposed Bill 34, Security for Courts, Electricity Generating Facilities and Nuclear Facilities Act, 2012 in Ontario. If passed as it is currently worded, Bill 34 will allow courthouse security to search all persons entering the court, including lawyers. The TLA maintains this is a potential exposure to lawyer-client privileged communications:

Under the proposed legislation, sections of the Police Services Act will allow for a search without warrant any person, vehicle or property in a person’s custody seeking access to a public courthouse. These search powers would include a person’s lawyer,

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In a landmark decision just 24 days after April 1, the Canadian Trade-marks Office has clarified the definition of “fish”. Constitutional lawyers continue to wrangle over whether this stunning policy reversal will be given retroactive effect.

Subject: Mise à jour Manuel de marchandises et services – Wares and Services Manual Update

Dans le but d’éviter toute ambiguité que ‘poisson’ est un terme spécifique et en termes ordinaires du commerce, l’entrée ‘Poissons pour l’alimentation’ dans le Manuel de marchandises et services sera remplacée par ‘Poisson’ seul, avec la note suivante: Cette entrée fait référence à la définition la plus courante de

. . . [more]

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), and the Offices of the Information and Privacy Commissioners (OIPCs) of Alberta and British Columbia have developed a guide titled Getting Accountability Right with a Privacy Management Program. The guide aims to help organizations implement an effective privacy management program that meets private-sector privacy legislation and to provide consistent direction on what it means to be an accountable organization when dealing with individuals’ personal information, accountability being the first and foremost obligation under privacy legislation.

These guidelines will help businesses take data protection from policy to practice, explained BC Information

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The Supreme Court today released its decisions in the van Breda, Banro and Black cases. It dismissed all three appeals.

I want to look in particular at van Breda, which deals at length with jurisdiction simpliciter and with forum non conveniens, with a discussion of real and substantial connection and a sideways glace at enforcement of foreign judgments (not yet at issue in this case, of course.) The Court, per Justice Lebel, sets out the principles of private international law.

In particular the Court upholds the Ontario Court of Appeal’s refinement of the factors that indicate a . . . [more]

Currently, the Canadian Human Rights Act prohibits discrimination based on a person’s sex and sexual orientation, among other grounds. However, the prohibited ground of sex and sexual orientation is considered by advocacy groups as inadequate to clearly inform the public at large that unreasonable discrimination on the basis of gender identity and gender expression is prohibited; hence, the creation of Bill C-279.

After almost two years, the National Assembly’s Select Committee on Dying with Dignity tabled its 180-page report in legislature, on March 22, 2012. Titled Dying With Dignity, the report proposes “medical aid to die” and 23 other recommendations.

The Government has recently announced its intention to focus on Bill C-12, the Safeguarding Canadians’ Personal Information Act, its attempt to update PIPEDA in accordance with the statute’s last 5 year review (which incidentally was conducted over 6 years ago). Bill C-12 is a lackluster piece of privacy protection that, in spite of its name, arguably does far more to erode privacy than it does to enhance it. One commentator even dubbed it’s last incarnation the ‘anti-privacy privacy bill‘. As the legislation can be expected to reemerge as early as two weeks hence, a few of its . . . [more]

On November 17, 2011, the federal government introduced Bill C-25, the proposed Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act and making related amendments to other Acts in Parliament as a first step to implement the federal portion of the Pooled Registered Pension Plan (PRPP) framework that will particularly be applicable to small businesses and self-employed persons across Canada.

According to the government, just over 60 percent of Canadians do not have a workplace pension plan. That is a large chunk of workers who are left behind and who could face financial troubles in their retirement years. PRPPs will offer them a new, . . . [more]

The Canadian government is set to pass back to work legislation for certain categories of Air Canada employees to prevent any major disruption of air travel by a potential labour dispute following difficult and unsuccessful collective bargaining (see here). The Honourable Lisa Raitt, Minister of Labour, introduced a bill to this effect yesterday and it is expected that it will be adopted by tomorrow. The legislation would require that the disputes over working terms and conditions be referred to binding arbitration.

Back to work legislation for Air Canada was also considered back in 2011 (see a Slaw blog posting . . . [more]

Hallelujah, @Orders-in-Council is tweeting again.

This twitter stream that monitors updates from the Privy Council Office has been intermittent to say the least. It is really important to know what is coming out of the Privy Council Office.

Given the on again off again nature of this particular twitter stream, should we follow it or not?

My instinct says watch for it, but continue with regular monitoring of the OIC database. What do you think? . . . [more]