The Ontario Court of Appeal released a decision earlier this month in Delicata v. Incorporated Synod of the Diocese of Huron, resolving a dispute between the congregation of an Anglican church in Windsor and the larger Anglican Church of Canada. The conflict originated in the Anglican Church of Canada’s blessing of same-sex marriages. The congregation of St. Aidan’s voted to leave the Synod of the Diocese of Huron after the Bishop of the Synod accepted a resolution to “grant permission to clergy, whose conscience permits, to bless the duly solemnized and registered civil marriages between same-sex couples.”

Although the . . . [more]

Occasionally here at SLAW I feel the need to represent the East Coast with an appropriately themed post. Earlier this week an interesting event happened when a Greenland Shark was brought back to Halifax in order to be examined. Why is this interesting? Because this is a shark that can grow over 6 metres in length, weigh over 2000 lbs, (perhaps larger than Great Whites) and we (meaning science type folk) know virtually nothing about it! This animal lives in the coldest, deepest parts of the ocean and a study from the 50’s estimated that they could live to be . . . [more]

The Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. recently produced a report comparing the legal situation of temporary or guest workers in 14 countries (including Canada):

“The report includes a comparative analysis and individual chapters on each country, the EU, and relevant international arrangements. It provides a general overview of a variety of immigration systems, and addresses issues such as eligibility criteria for the admission of guest workers and their families, guest workers’ recruitment and sponsorship, and visa requirements. The report further discusses the tying of temporary workers to their employers in some countries; the duration and the conditions that

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100 years ago, in 1913, the Hon. Sir William Ralph Meredith, Q.C., LL.D, at the time Chief Justice of Ontario, tabled his Workers' Compensation report in the Ontario Legislature. From this report emerged the Meredith Principles, which are the tenets upon which the Ontario workers' compensation system was built, the impact of which was felt gradually throughout Canada.

IP Osgoode and Osgoode Hall Law School’s Pierre Genest Memorial Fund are presenting a day-long symposium on User-Generated Content Under Canadian Copyright Law  on Thursday October 10, 2013. The featured speaker will be Professor Victor Nabhan and, according to IP Osgoode,

[s]ome of the topics for discussion include an analysis of the UGC [user-generated content] exception under Canadian copyright law, the interaction of the UGC exception with fair dealing, specific legal aspects of fan fiction and appropriation art, and whether the UGC exception is in conformity with international treaty standards. Representatives from SOCAN, YouTube and BCE will also provide some

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This weekend thousands of Quebec residents protested the newly proposed Charter of Values. The protests demonstrate there is still significant opposition to the measures the Parti Quebecois would like to see enacted for public employees.

Meanwhile the media has had the opportunity to survey constitutional legal scholars across the country, and there appear to be mixed reactions to how this would pass a s. 1 analysis. . . . [more]

On Tuesday, September 10, 2013, Quebec’s Parti Quebecois government led by Pauline Marois released its proposal for a Charter of Quebec Values, which would decree the religious neutrality of the state and its employees and management of religious accommodation. This is not the province’s first attempt. In 2009 and 2011, Marois presented bills “to assert the fundamental values of the Québec Nation,” which we wrote about previously on Slaw. Going further back, the Quebec government says these measures sprouted naturally from the seed planted over 50 years ago in the Quiet Revolution (Révolution tranquille).

A small groundswell of citizens in High River, Alberta are noting their objections to the actions of the RCMP during an emergency flood this past June. In a meeting this week with the RCMP the residents question why searches by the military and RCMP resulted in property damage and seizure of firearms. The RCMP justify their actions by stating they were conducting searches of the homes to ensure no residents or pets were left behind during the evacuation.

The RCMP has the authority under s. 487.11 of the Criminal Code to enter homes to save lives. But their authority at . . . [more]

I had naively assumed that if you were pardoned for having committed, and being convicted of, a criminal offence, that was that: you and society were square and the slate was clean. An article in today’s Globe and Mail, “Ottawa revokes pardon for man accused in Via train plot” by Colin Freeze, disabused me of that notion. The truth of the matter is that the clearing of the record is conditional.

Under s.2.1 of the Criminal Records Act, R.S.C., 1985, c. C-47, the Parole Board of Canada “has exclusive jurisdiction and absolute discretion to order, refuse . . . [more]

The European Court of Human Rights is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the entry into force of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was signed in Rome on November 1, 1950, by 12 member states of the Council of Europe, and came into force on September 3, 1953. The Convention was one of the first instruments to give effect and binding force to certain of the rights stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Last month, the Manitoba Court of Appeal commented on the practice in some Manitoba courts of ordering charitable donations be made as a part of sentencing in criminal or other quasi-criminal proceedings.

The Court, in R. v. Choi (J.W.), 2013 MBCA 75 (CanLII) was considering an appeal of sentence by the Crown from a conviction under s. 124(1)(c) of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act relating to the defendant’s illegal employment of six foreign nationals. The sentence imposed by the lower Court was an 18-month conditional discharge including supervised probation and a condition that Choi:

Make a charitable

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As service levels and service level credits have become a standard component of outsourcing agreements, service providers have responded with requests for earn backs: the right, if a specified level of performance is achieved, to earn back, or not have to pay, the service level credit. However, if earn backs are to be included in an outsourcing agreement as part of a service level regime, they need to be defined carefully at the beginning and integrated into the service level methodology: when they are included late in the game, as a concession granted by the customer in response to a . . . [more]