R v Ferguson 2008 SCC 6

[73] A final cost of constitutional exemptions from mandatory minimum sentence laws is to the institutional value of effective law making and the proper roles of Parliament and the courts. Allowing unconstitutional laws to remain on the books deprives Parliament of certainty as to the constitutionality of the law in question and thus of the opportunity to remedy it. Legislatures need clear guidance from the courts as to what is constitutionally permissible and what must be done to remedy legislation that is found to be constitutionally infirm. In granting constitutional exemptions, courts would be

There’s an interesting (and long) post on Slashdot that’s essentially a riff by a non-lawyer on vagueness and interpretation in law. What attracted me was the title, which is taken from the opening thought (by another Slashdot contributor): Next Year’s Laws, Now Out in Beta!, the thought being, essentially, that if laws were produced like software, there’d be a trial period where beta testers attempted to break it, confound it or expose ambiguities in it.

I seem to recall that it’s suggested from time to time that the legislature deliberately float draft bills through law schools to let the . . . [more]

According to news reports this morning, the Ontario Liberal Party (currently in power) have contacted the opposition parties with a proposal to change the hours of the Ontario Legislative Assembly. The proposal is to start daily sitting of the Assembly at 9:30 a.m. rather than 1:30 p.m. This would mean holding Question Period in the morning rather than the afternoon, therefore allowing for more attendance in the afternoon rather than sparse attendance in the evenings which sometimes went until midnight. They also hope this effort will allow for the passing of more private legislation.

From today’s Globe and . . . [more]

I often consult WestlaweCarswell for electronic access to the Index to Canadian Legal Literature. I use the search template designed for that purpose. Usually I rely on general keyword searches. But today, since my research related to a specific piece of legislation, I thought I would use the “Legislation” field. Unfortunately, my various search term combinations did not easily yield the results I sought.

Here is a hypothetical example to illustrate my point:

If I entered Criminal Code 123 into the “Legislation” field, I got one hit, which actually related to s. 123 of another act and a different section

The Canadian Labour Congress announced a “Victory for Workers” on Friday:

Workers finally have new law to protect their wages

OTTAWA – Canadian workers have finally won new legal protection for their wages and their pension contributions when their employer goes bankrupt. Bill C-12, a series of amendments to existing insolvency and wage protection laws, was approved by the Senate last night and received Royal Assent today. This was accomplished after an intensive three-year campaign by the Canadian Labour Congress and its affiliated unions to change bankruptcy laws that unfairly put workers last in line to get paid.

It seems . . . [more]

The Canadian Parliament held emergency sittings of both the House of Commons and the Senate last night to pass through Bill C-38 on an urgent basis. This Bill is meant to force the re-opening of the Chalk River Nuclear Reactor, previously closed by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission in November on safety concerns. This reactor reportedly creates two-thirds of the world’s isotopes for use in medical evaluations or treatment, including for cancer. There is now a world shortage of these isotopes which has pressured the government to make this move. Bill C-38 was passed last night, but is not yet . . . [more]

This Ottawa Citizen article on the appointment of Kevin Whitaker to review the Ontario ban on unionization of part-time College workers went out on the CAUT Contract Academic Staff wire today.

The past decade has seen great strides in unionization of part-time (aka Sessional or Contract Academic Staff) university teachers. While some full-time faculty associations have acquired rights for these additional units, many are organized by national unions such as CUPE (which tend to hold rights for Teaching Assistant units as well). The article indicates that the “newly formed Organization of Part-time and Sessional Employees of the Colleges of Applied . . . [more]

The British Broadcasting Corporation has a report about a survey to choose the most bizarre and ridiculous laws still on the books in the UK.

Some 4,000 people took part in the poll by the British television channel UKTV Gold.

Among the silliest laws, according to the vox populi (or is that vox dei?):

• It is illegal to die in the Houses of Parliament
• It could be regarded an act of treason to place a postage stamp bearing the British king or queen’s image upside-down
• In the UK, a pregnant woman can legally relieve herself anywhere she wants
• It is

Last week I was fortunate to attend the international conference Law Via the Internet held in Montreal, hosted by the good folks at LexUM who bring us our CanLII system.

Law Via the Internet coincides with the annual meeting of the Legal Information Institutes (or LIIs) from around the world.

Here are some of my take-away thoughts from the conference:

• free public access to law is key to helping developing countries eliminate poverty. Simply put, making the law accessible allows lawyers in a country do their job representing people, helping fight for people’s rights. Furthermore, organizations wanting to financially support

TIFF, the word was all over the Canadian media a week or so ago. For those of us that are technically inclined we might have wondered; at first glance, why our media of choice suddenly got so interested in a computer image format. Once we removed the indents of our keyboards from our fingers, we realized that the ubiquitous TIFF, was the Toronto International Film Festival. Alas, TIFF is not the only “FF” around, in these parts TIFF is merely the signal that the Atlantic Film Festival is about to start(AFF?). So with all the FF talk around . . . [more]

Startling news, to say the least, in the Globe’s Business section today. Telus and Bell paid two lawyers at McCarthy Tétrault to draft a model telecommunications bill that’s been offered to the government as a template for a new Telecommunications Act. You could be forgiven for wondering if the next amendments to the Canada Health Act will be brought to you by RJR Nabisco.

But I think there’s more to it than that. As the article points out, the drafting lawyers are enormously respected and the companies have reportedly had no input whatsoever into the content of the model . . . [more]

The Washington Post reports in the Sept. 7/07 article Judge Invalidates Patriot Act Provisions that a judge has declared portions of the U.S. Patriot Act to be unconstitutional: . . . [more]