As delivered by the wonderfully named Herménégilde Chiasson, yesterday’s Throne Speech in Frederickton contains a paragraph on legal information.

The speech from the throne opened the third session of the 56th Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick.

* Timely access to justice is important and your government will receive the report of the Task Force on Access to Family Justice. It is expected that the report will provide recommendations for improved access to justice, expanded use of alternatives to family court, and increased access to legal information and legal assistance in family law matters. Your government will provide its . . . [more]

The Globe and Mail’s article yesterday on the Alberta Court of Appeal decision in Yugraneft Corp. v. Rexx Management Corp. left me wondering. In Yugraneft, the Court held that an application to register and enforce a foreign arbitral award under the 1958 Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (a.k.a. the New York Convention) is subject to the ordinary limitation period of two years.

The decision has indeed been the source of much concern among Canadian arbitration practitioners; even the decision by the Court of Queen’s Bench in 2007 created quite a stir. My own sense . . . [more]

Like many Slaw readers, I monitor legislation in Canada, especially federal legislation. Our 1st session of the 40th parliament officially began on November 18, 2008 with the Throne Speech on November 19, 2009. We are now on day 8 of this parliament and Bill C-2, the first government sponsored bill, has yet to appear on the Projected Order Of Business or the Order and Notice Paper.

As I clicked my shortcut to LegisINFO and saw no Bill C-2 again today, I found myself wondering if this long delay was out of the ordinary. To do a fast grab of . . . [more]

Schedule L of Bill 114 in Ontario, if passed, will effectively over-rule the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Hare v Hare. The Bill will amend the Limitations Act, 2002, by tying the limitation period to the date of default under a demand loan rather than the date of the loan. The Ontario Bar Association discusses this issue in its October 28th e-newsletter. . . . [more]

The Library of Congress website THOMAS, which provides information about U.S. legislation, has established a system of persistent URLs for legislative documents. This means that hyperlinks using this format will always (i.e. for the foreseeable future) take a reader to the desired document, regardless of any server changes that might have occurred since the link was created.

The persistent link is created by following a syntax that assembles a document’s URI. (A “uniform resource identifier” is a unique string of characters that is used to identify a particular resource on the internet; a URL — “uniform resource . . . [more]

The recent decision of the Ontario Superior Court in De Wolf v. Bell ExpressVu has been hailed, at least by the plaintiff, as a win for the consumer. Myself, I admit to some doubts: the reasoning of the decision suggests that any victory is Pyrrhic at best.

For those who haven’t read the decision, the plaintiff challenged Bell ExpressVu’s practice of charging an “administration fee” of $25 on delinquent accounts, on the basis of the Criminal Code prohibition of “interest” exceeding 60%. Bell argued – and, in fact, the court agreed – that the fee was a fair estimate of . . . [more]

An article in today’s Globe and Mail, “Wine drinkers are voters too,” by Beppi Crosariol, talked about a crackdown by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario and Manitoba Liquor Control Commission on the practice of direct importation of wine from British Columbia. The infraction, it seems, is of a 1928 statute, the Importation of Intoxicating Liquors Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. I-3 (considerably updated over the years). The kick in this act is in section 3 (1):

Notwithstanding any other Act or law, no person shall import, send, take or transport, or cause to be imported, sent, taken

The “Western Canada Law Reform Agencies” — i.e. those of B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba — have together produced a report entitled “Enduring Powers of Attorney: Areas for Reform” [PDF] with the aim of harmonizing their separate pieces of legislation. The report is 90 pages in length and contains the following substantive chapters:

• Recognizing and Extended Power of Attorney
• Clarifying Attorney Duties Under an EPA
• Preventing Misuse of an EPA
• Transitional Provisions

AustLII is developing point-in-time legislation on their site! You can read about the project here.

In Canada, the Department of Justice Laws site has point-in-time legislation available back to Jauanary 2003 for acts and from March 22, 2006 for regulations.

e-Laws has Ontario period in time legislation available too.

The Alberta QPSource Internet paid site has point-in-time statutes back to January 1, 2002 for subscribers. Other legal publishers offer some point-in-time services too.

Wouldn’t it be great if other LII’s could offer point-in-time legislation for one stop shopping. . . . [more]

A tip of the SLAW hat to Richard (Rick) Sage (of the Ontario Legislative Library) who made me aware today of “Our Ontario” (http://www.ourontario.ca) (SLAW’s Neil Campbell mentioned a related initiative relating to Alouette Canada in his 17 April 2007 post here).

The Government Documents collection on the “Our Ontario” site at http://govdocs.ourontario.ca can be used to find old Ontario Legislative Assembly Journals (turn-of-the-century old, e.g., from 1867).

If you type in the following terms – ontario legislative assembly journals – using the “AND” connector radio button, the first link is to the “repository directory” being http://www.ontla.on.ca/library/repository/ser/23347/ . . . [more]

The grassroots net neutrality advocates are becoming increasingly organized. Case in point is the coalition SaveOurNet.ca hosting an open forum tomorrow evening in Toronto called Protecting Canada’s Open Internet:

SaveOurNet.ca: Protecting Canada’s Open Internet

An open forum for Toronto’s tech/web/media communities hosted by:

Matt Thompson, SavetheInternet.com and SaveOurNet.ca
Steve Anderson, SaveOurNet.ca and The Campaign for Democratic Media
Mark Kuznicki, Remarkk.com, Open Community Evangelist, TorCamp

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 24th, 6:00pm
Location: Fionn MacCool’s, 181 University Avenue @ Adelaide, Toronto
Snacks will be provided, cash bar
Your donation/sponsorship to help cover costs can be made by purchasing special tickets above.

Google Trends has been improved lately — you can export data to a spreadsheet, for example — so I thought I’d take a look at how “copyright” has been faring as a search term in Canada over the last month. The graph that results shows clearly the increase in public interest as legislation became imminent, spiking just after the government introduced Bill C-61, and falling away within a day or two, headed for the usual level of general lack of interest.

If you click on the image of the chart, you can see an enlarged version; the “A” is the . . . [more]