The Star reports today that the provincial  legislature cabinet passed a new law on June 2 without any debate. That wouldn’t be such a big deal, except that it won’t even be published in The Ontario Gazette until July 2, 2010, after it’s revoked on June 28, 2010.

Considering the nature of the regulation, it’s worthy of closer scrutiny.

Ontario Regulation 233/10 was made pursuant to ss. 1(c) and 6 of the Public Works Protection Act, and designates the now-infamous fenced-off area in downtown Toronto as a “public work.” But it’s not just the general area:

Everything described in…

. . . [more]

Unfortunately for them, polar bears currently don’t have a vote in a jurisdiction that matters enough to anyone in power.

Jocelyn Stacey and Shaun Fluker (University of Calgary – Faculty of Law) have posted The Polar Bear is Not a Species at Risk in Canada (Contrary to what the Rest of the World Thinks): When is a Decision Not to List Unreasonable in Law? on SSRN.

 Here is the abstract:

There is general scientific and ethical consensus that the polar bear species is in peril and in need of protection if it is to avoid extinction. However Canada has

. . . [more]

Bill C-32, the Act to amend the Copyright Act, has a lot of provisions, mostly aimed at balancing the interests of creators of copyrightable content with those who consume (or work with) that content.

Probably the most controversial provision involves ‘digital locks’, i.e. technical protection measures that are designed to prevent people from using the works in ways that the owner does not want. The Act makes it an offence to ‘break’ those locks for any purpose at all.

Some of the attacks on the locks rule have been a bit exaggerated, claiming that there should be no protection — . . . [more]

As a small business owner I am gearing up to start applying the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) to my company’s services, in effect July 1, 2010 or earlier. I note this has implications for both those of us who reside in these provinces and those who reside outside these provinces but provide goods and services to residents of B.C. and Ontario. Here are some of the explanatory resources I have found:

• Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) for Ontario and British Columbia – Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)
• Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) – Videocasts – CRA
• HST news updates – CRA
• HST for

. . . [more]

According to Fraud Watchers, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC) has just over 1,000 authorized members, but the watchdog group estimates an additional 5,000 unauthorized “ghost” consultants operate in Canada, and likely many thousands more in other countries...

Bill C-32, introduced today into the Canadian House of Commons, is being called the Copyright Modernization Act. The government has set up a site called Balanced Copyright. On the site are fact sheets, FAQs, a news release and a backgrounder. A copy of the bill at first reading was posted later in the day on the Parliament of Canada site. . . . [more]

HeinOnline is now offering an add-on subscription for archival Canadian and Australian legislation with the following scope:

Acts of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1901-2008

Acts of the Parliament of Canada, 1792-2007

We are in the process of subscribing so I have not been able to test the feature of being able to search across the full text of all Acts or to narrow the search to a specific year or just the Tables or Tables of Contents. Presumably it is also browsable.

With this content, and with the likely future content of other Canadian legislative material being . . . [more]

The new copyright bill is expected today. There has been much anticipation about what it might contain. That is understandable given that several failed and controversial attempts have been made to pass a reform bill over the last few years. And that there were extensive hearings around the prior bill last summer that attracted a significant amount of commentary. And that digital media is considered by many (e.g. the Canada 3.0 initiative) to be a crucial part of the economic future of Canada.

The anti-spam and privacy bills introduced last week are important bills that have effect on business and . . . [more]

Today’s a day that Phil Anisman must have wondered whether he would see. Back in 1979, he published Proposals for a securities market law for Canada.

A national Securities Bill unveiled, a Canadian Securities Regulatory Authority established and the scheme instantly referred to the Supreme Court of Canada.

As the preamble says:

1. capital markets affect the well-being and prosperity of all Canadians;
2. capital markets are increasingly national and international in scope;
3. capital markets are rapidly evolving and include increasingly complex financial products and methods of distribution and trading;
4. it is important for Canada to have competitive capital markets and

. . . [more]

On Tuesday, May 25, the Minister of Industry introduced in Parliament Bill C29, also known as an Act to amend the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.

Bill C-29 is the long-awaited government response to the five year mandatory review of PIPEDA and contains a number of very significant amendments that, if passed, will alter the landscape of privacy law compliance in Canada. At a very high level, it provides mandatory breach notification for security breaches related to personal information, attempts to clarify the confusing “lawful authority” provisions in Section 7 and also facilitates the disclosure of customer . . . [more]

The Canadian government introduced two important new bills yesterday. Bill C-29 amends PIPEDA – I’ll leave commentary on that to David Fraser.

Bill C-28 is the “Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act” or FISA. It is essentially the same as the “Electronic Commerce Protection Act” that was proposed previously. Here is Industry Canada’s news release, and the bill itself.

It targets the sending of what we would typically call spam, or unwanted commercial email, as well as spyware and phishing.

From the news release:

The proposed FISA is intended to deter the most damaging and deceptive forms of . . . [more]

After much stalling and anticipation Ontario has finally enacted a formal ignition interlock program designed to relieve some of the burden on our courts caused by massive amounts of impaired driving litigation.

Effective Aug. 3, 2010, persons convicted of a first impaired driving offence that does not cause bodily harm or death will be eligible for reduced licence suspensions if they comply with the regulations of the program — the primary requirement being the installation of an ignition interlock device (essentially a mini-breathalyzer machine attached to the ignition of your vehicle making it impossible to operate the car unless sobriety . . . [more]