The first installment of Quebec's 40th Parliament is now in session. Quebec's new Premier Pauline Marois delivered a speech from the throne that established zero tolerance for and a commitment to fight against corruption within the government. The theme: “Integrity”!

It appears that the UK will accept deferred prosecution agreements as part of the toolkit for dealing with economic crime. Over the course of the summer the UK Ministry of Justice invited commentary by the public on a consultation document [PDF] outlining the nature and use of prosecution agreements. At the end of last month the government reported that:

A total of 75 responses to the consultation were received from a variety of sources including key prosecutors, members of the public, members of the judiciary and legal profession, businesses, academics and regulatory bodies.

There was strong support for the proposals

. . . [more]

The Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled today that the Hungarian government’s decision to lower the mandatory age of retirement for judges, prosecutors and notaries from the age of 70 to 62 constituted discrimination on the grounds of age (read the decision here). 

While recognizing that legitimate social policy objectives can justify a derogation from the prohibition of discriminating on the grounds of age, in this case, the objectives of this measure invoked by the Hungarian government – the need to standardize the age-limits for retirement for public sector employees and to establish a balanced age . . . [more]

When jurisdictions enact new legislation governing limitation periods for causes of action, the legislation will deal with the transition between the old regime and the new. Transition provisions are needed because incidents alleged to create causes of action may have occurred while the old legislation was in force but the action was not commenced until after the new legislation took effect.

Duchesne v. St-Denis, 2012 ONCA 699 is such a case.

It is an important case for Ontario lawyers on the interpretation of Ontario’s the Limitations Act, 2002, particular where the injured person was under the age . . . [more]

At the IT.Can conference earlier this week, I outlined some legal issues with social media.

One of my quick points was that there could be an issue about the entitlement of an ex-employee to a professional LinkedIn account. The case I had in mind in listing the issue was one involving a woman named Linda Eagle, who built up a company with her own name, but when she sold it and the new owners fired her, a dispute arose whether they could keep her LinkedIn profile. Since her assistant had her password, the employers managed to take over the . . . [more]

At issue in the second request for reconsideration is the Tribunal’s determination that an ongoing wage differential between disabled and non-disabled employees is not a series of incidents for the purposes of determining the limitation period provided by section 34(1) of the Human Rights Code.

The report of the Cohen Commission, which invested the decline of sockey salmon in the Fraser River, released its report to the public today. The $25 million inquiry reviewed 3 million pages of evidence and 179 witnesses over the course of 2 years.

The salmon decline caused significant concern in B.C. because fisheries were closed for several years, despite favourable pre-season estimates. In 2009 only 1.4 million of an expected 10 million salmon returned to spawn.

The report was unable to identify any single cause for the decline, noting that the situation was complicated:

Some, I suspect, hoped that our . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada granted leave for appeal for the Ontario Court of Appeal decision in Bedford v. Canada. The Court also granted that the appellate decision be stayed until judgement is rendered, meaning the Criminal Code provisions relating to prostitution challenged in this case will still be valid, even if not routinely or uniformly enforced by the police.

The Bedford case may be heard in conjunction with, or set a legal backdrop, to a similar case in B.C. in (Attorney General) v. Downtown Eastside Sex Workers United Against Violence Society. The differences between the cases have . . . [more]

This week, the 34th International Meeting of Data Protection & Privacy Commissioners, is taking place in Punta del Este, Uruguay. The meeting brings together leading decision-makers and stakeholders from all over the world to discuss and [at least attempt to] resolve pressing privacy-related issues. The week kicked off with the Public Voice meeting, hosted by civil society representatives and canvassing a breadth of public policy issues.

One matter of interest that was explored during a highly informative panel on civic participation and e-voting, raised the question of whether public sector Privacy Impact Assessments should include a mandatory . . . [more]

The Law Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. occasionally publishes reports that compare the laws on a given theme in a number of countries.

Earlier this month, the Library published Bioethics Legislation in Selected Countries:

“This report examines the field of bioethics from an international and regional legal perspective. It focuses on major international law documents such as the United Nations Universal Declaration on Bioethics and Human Rights and UNESCO declarations on human cloning and the human genome. Coverage of regional legal instruments includes the Council of Europe Convention on HumanRights and Biomedicine (the Oviedo Convention) and its Protocols

. . . [more]

by Daniel Gogek

As you saw from last week’s post (The Rob Ford ‘conflict’ case: Why it will be dismissed), the case wasn’t a conflict case at all. It’s a case of a public body – Toronto’s City Council – imposing a penalty on a member and the Canadian law that requires giving the accused council member, in this case Rob Ford, the opportunity to be heard and thus speak to the matter at Council.

How is it possible that there was such confusion on this issue of ‘conflict?’ The short answer is that the whole phenomenon of . . . [more]

The Quebec government has decided that in the spring of 2013, they will table proposed legislation to legalize doctor-assisted suicide.