The Canadian Government stunned the telecom sector last Friday when it overturned the CRTC’s October 2009 ruling that Globalive Wireless Management Corp. was not Canadian-owned and controlled as required by section 16 of the Telecommunications Act. The variance is effective immediately which means that it’s now clear sailing for Globalive’s entry into the Canadian wireless telecommunications market. . . . [more]

“[T]his regrettable result is a necessary consequence of Canada’s commitment to policies of international comity and reciprocity. Any time sovereign immunity is asserted, the inevitable result is that certain domestic parties will be left without legal recourse. This is a policy choice implicit in the Act itself.”

Re Canada Labour Code, [1992] 2 S.C.R. 50 at 91, per La Forest J.

Last week, in a Montreal courtroom, Justice La Forest’s observation was put to the test. For the past three and a half years, Stephan Hashemi, the son of the late Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi, has been seeking to . . . [more]

While we have been receiving great feedback on the various articles on social media in the latest issue of LawPRO Magazine, the surprise front-runner for most popular article in this issue has had over 300 downloads in the first four days – Yvonne Diedrick’s article on the Apology Act, 2009. Perhaps not a real surprise as many Ontario lawyers I have talked to are not familiar with this new legislation.

The Apology Act came into force in Ontario on April 23, 2009. It allows the communication of expressions of sorrow or regret without worrying that the comments can . . . [more]

Given the current news stories arising out of the Commonwealth leaders meeting and the Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill introduced last month, I thought it might be useful for Slaw readers to have access to the actual language of the bill. (I guess it’s too much to ask the mainstream media outlets to either quote the legislation at length, in cases such as this, or provide a link to a web location for the text of legislation under discussion.)

A PDF photocopy of the bill is available on the Box Turtle Bulletin site, as is an HTML text version. . . . [more]

On November 25, 2009 Bill C-36, An act to amend the Criminal Code, otherwise known as Serious Time for the Most Serious Crime Act passed 3rd reading in the House of Commons by a vote of 187 to 69.

The bill amends provisions in the Criminal Code regarding the right of persons convicted of murder or high treason to apply for early parole through the elimination of the “faint hope” clause. Using the new ability to link to a section of the Criminal Code, here is the current legislation.

One definition of hope is “to desire with . . . [more]

A couple of new features are now available at Quickscribe’s BC Legislation Portal:

1. BC Bills Tracker – As BC Bills recieve their 1st or 3rd Reading and added into the Quickscribe databases, the new bill tracker page will automatically publish those alerts.
2. BC Consequential Amendments – When proposed legislation, if passed, will amend another Act, this page category will aggregate those related alerts.

Both tools may be personalized further – limiting by area of law, for example – using Quickscribe’s (free) RSS alert service for Bill Tracking. But if users are simply after a roundup of new BC . . . [more]

A patron asks you to find (and update) a Canadian federal private Act. How do you do it?

The legal research literature lacks detail on the process, so I thought I would test the following approach with SLAW readers and ask if there is a better way. I also provide links to some additional resources on researching federal private Acts.

In the following example, I have (arbitrarily) picked the Stanmount Pipe Line Company (which would appear to no longer exist – at least based on Google searches; as such, it is not a very realistic example, but I needed . . . [more]

When I got back from vacation just over a week ago I discovered there was an elephant in the room: a possible looming federal election that no one really wanted to discuss. Except, perhaps, the media. We’ve even avoided discussing it here on Slaw for whatever reason (are we just too polite to talk politics in public? How very Canadian). In the meantime we have a lovely trio of election-related controversies from which to sample: . . . [more]

I had earlier asked about efforts to organize the increasing amount of legislation being digitized as a result of various efforts by academic and courthouse law libraries.

While conducting such historical legislative research online I stumbled across the Canadian Legislation Online page at the Great Library and I don’t think SLAW has yet commented on their page.

Kudos to the Great Library. They provide links to a number of the historical material, including:

– Revised Statutes of Canada, 1970

– the Canada Gazette (soon to be from 1841 to 1997) (via Library and Archives Canada) (the site works great and . . . [more]

The Bank of Canada announced this week that the recession is coming to an end, and although U.S. numbers don’t look quite so good, things were turning around for biotech as well. Nothing breeds a good investment mood like successes, and this week had plenty.

• First off, Venture Capital stats for Q2 in the U.S. showed biotech and healthcare as garnering the biggest share of investments, and Human Genome Sciences scored a big clinical success with its Lupus treatment, which really changed the mood on Wall Street.
• Medarex shareholders got a friendly $2.1 billion (with a “b”) offer

In May 2008, Ontario passed the Access to Adoption Records Act, 2008, S.O. 2008, c. 5. As of June 1, 2009, adoption records in Ontario are now open. From an ad placed by the Ontario government in a local newspaper:

This means that adopted adults and birth parents can apply for post-adoption birth information from birth records and adoption orders.

An adopted adult, 18 years of age or older, can now apply for a copy of his or her original birth registration and adoption order. A birth parent can receive information from the birth registration and adoption order of

On June 22, 2009, Canada’s federal government announced that a team led by the chair of the B.C. Securities Commission, Doug Hyndman, will lead the transition to a new national securities regulator. Mr. Hyndman will be responsible for negotiating with the provinces—each of which currently has its own securities regulator—as well as developing the legislation that outlines the new national regulator’s mandate. A report is due in a year, with an implementation target of three years.

Goodness knows, this is long overdue. In the absence of a single national securities regulator, efforts have been underway for many years to harmonize . . . [more]