Last week, the Quebec government introduced a bill in the National Assembly (provincial legislature) to tackle the issue of SLAPPs.

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs for short, typically take the form of defamation actions brought by large corporate actors in an attempt to shut down criticism by non-governmental organizations or local citizens. The actions are seen by critics as an abuse of process, or a form of legal bullying by interests with deep pockets who try to bankrupt opponents or intimidate them into silence.

Bill 99 will amend the Quebec Code of Civil Procedure to authorize courts . . . [more]

It has now been posted on the Canadian Parliament website:

Bill C-61 – First Reading

Hat tip to John Sadler, Chair of the Copyright Committee of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries / Association canadienne des bibliothèques de droit who shared the link via the CALL listserv. . . . [more]

Minister Jim Prentice is about to table the government’s new copyright law, Bill 61. Although the text is not available at this time — 12.11 p.m. — it should be online shortly, once Parliament deals with a few other matters.

The press ban is lifted, however, and you can read what the Globe and Mail and the CBC have to say about the proposed legislation.

If someone could post the link to the bill as a comment to this post, that would be great. . . . [more]

From cbcnews.ca (June 12, 2008):

The federal government has introduced legislation to make it easier to prosecute people who download copyrighted material from the internet.

Industry Minister Jim Prentice tabled amendments to the Copyright Law in the House of Commons Thursday. Individuals caught downloading copyrighted files would be fined $500 under the proposed amendments. The current copyright law — intended to catch commercial cheaters — carries a maximum fine of $20,000 for infringements.

The bill has been in limbo since the Conservatives first put it on the Commons order paper in December. Prentice was caught between business interests who wanted

“Draft it yourself,” that is, using the wiki set up for that purpose by McGill University’s Centre for Intellectual Property Policy (cipp).

It’s interesting to see the points made by the cipp folks to try to get the wiki to work for such a serious and exacting project:

• Like any wiki, justify your comments, add links, etc.
• Let’s be serious. If we want this to be an alternative piece of legislation, we have to be balanced. (David Lametti, for example, would personally like to see copyright’s term reduced radically and the re-imposition of a registration requirement, but he appreciates that

Section 1 starts: . . . [more]

After the provinces of British Columbia, Manitoba and Saskatchewan, it appears that Ontario is interested in having an apology law.

Liberal David Orazietti has sponsored a bill (referred to the provincial legislature’s Standing Committee on Social Policy after 2nd reading) that would allow an individual or organization to apologize for an accident or wrongdoing without it being considered an admission of liability admissible in a civil proceeding.

Here are a few earlier posts about apology laws on the Library Boy blog:

• Apology Acts – Saying ‘Sorry’ Without Incurring Liability (November 19, 2006): “The province of Saskatchewan will amend its Evidence

Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has launched a new website called A Nation’s Chronicle: The Canada Gazette:

“Often referred to as ‘the official newspaper of the Government of Canada,’ the Canada Gazette has been an important instrument in the Canadian democratic process for more than 160 years. It has served to inform Canadians of the operations of government and to involve them actively in the legislative process. With this site, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), in co-operation with the Canada Gazette Directorate, Public Works and Government of Services Canada, will make the Gazette available online, in its entirety, for

Friday night 9,000 Toronto Transit Commission’s unionized workers voted on a tentative deal with the TTC and, despite the expectation by both the media and Toronto residents that they would either accept the deal or give 48 hours notice of any strike action, they did not accept the deal and went on immediate strike at midnight. Amalgamated Transit Union Local 113 President Bob Kinnear had endorsed the deal, but it is speculated that a number of maintenance workers were not happy with the lack of job security given in the agreement.

The immediate strike action was taken because the union . . . [more]

A legal low-tech note for a Friday — which is still law and technology and, so, fit meat for Slaw:

The Premier of Ontario will announce today that a regulation taking effect immediately will undo any existing bans on the use of clotheslines by homeowners and preclude any such bans in the future. The regulation, which hasn’t yet made it to the e-laws site, is made pursuant to the Energy Conservation Leadership Act, 2006, S.O. 2006, c.3, Schedule A:

s.3(2) A person is permitted to use designated goods, services and technologies in such circumstances as may be prescribed, despite

Boing Boing gives us Carl Malmud’s report that U.S. free access sites Justia and Public.Resources.Org have received take-down letters from the Oregon Legislative Counsel in connection with their publishing of Oregon’s laws. Apparently West Publishing, which has also reproduced Oregon’s laws without a licence from the state, will not receive a similar demand.

I know that Canada and Ontario claim Crown copyright in our laws but explicitly permit copying if the material is reproduced accurately and that copyright is acknowledged. . . . [more]

For all you law and IT lovers, I am pleased to announce that Leg@l.IT is back this year! With Canada’s Privacy Commissionner, Jennifer Stoddart, and Prof. Pierre Trudel as co-presidents, three tracks with the most interesting and en vogue subjects (here is the agenda) and an impressive group of speakers, including fellow Slawers (Simon Chester, Jordan Furlong and Vincent Gautrais) and blogger (David Bilinsky), it is THE event you don’t want to miss!

Leg@l.IT is an accessible and spearheading conference, the most important of this kind in Canada, about the potential and . . . [more]