Sensibly, everyone’s presumed to know the law: to have it otherwise would encourage willful ignorance or claims of ignorance as means of evading legal consequences. And with equal sense, laws have to be promulgated for their application to be fundamentally fair or even instrumentally useful. So much for theory. Practice, as always, is rather more of a messy struggle, as you’ll know.

There’s the basic matter of getting the text of laws out to the people. We’re doing a decent job of that in Canada as our various jurisdictions make their legislation and judicial opinions increasingly available in digitized formats . . . [more]

The Charter of the French Language (“French Charter“) has been making headlines these past few weeks, with proposals to extend it to Quebec’s daycare services and recently made campaign promises. This, however, will not be the last we hear of it.

Indeed, six large retailers (Best Buy Canada, Gap Canada, Costco Wholesale Canada, Old Navy, Guess Canada and Wal-mart Canada), the majority of which are represented by the Quebec division of the Retail Council of Canada, will be asking the Superior Court of Quebec to declare whether or not the Office de la langue française (“Office”) has the . . . [more]

The American Federal Trade Commission has published a staff report entitled Best Practices for Common Uses of Facial Recognition Technologies [PDF]. The FTC has the jurisdiction under 15 USC § 45 (m) to make rules “respecting unfair or deceptive acts or practices” in commerce. As I’m sure you’ll know, facial recognition technology is fast advancing and has already found its way into software such as that used to organize photographs by the identity of the people in them (and, presumably, into the various operations of the authorities concerned with security — something left untouched by the report, of course).

The . . . [more]

In his 8 October speech entitled ‘Dissenting Judgments – Self Indulgence or Self Sacrifice’, Lord justice Kerr of the UK Supreme Court poses this interesting question: “Should the possible future utility of a dissent encourage, or should the apparent futility of a dissent deter an expression of disagreement with the majority? And should the circumstance that the dissent is to be expressed in a final court of appeal make a difference?”

Are dissents in courts of final appeal “poignant judicial tragedies” offensive to conventions of certainty and unanimity, as some commentators have said?

Do they weaken the effect of the . . . [more]

This morning, by 6 to 1, the SCC dealt with pornography on a work-issued computer and whether an employee had any reasonable expectation of privacy. The majority of the court set asise the Ontario Court of Appeal’s order in R. v. Cole, to exclude the evidence on the basis that it was obatined in breach of ss. 8 and 24(2) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Abella J. would have continued the exclusion. A new trial will be held in any event.

Here is the headnote: . . . [more]

The Federal Court of Canada ruled on Tuesday October 2, 2012 that the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal erred in law when it refused to apply Section 13 of the Canada Human Rights Act following a hearing into a complaint by Ottawa lawyer and activist Richard Warman.

I presented today at the London Bridges to Better Business conference on the top 10 legal issues when taking your business online, along with colleagues Mana Khami and Mike Mumby who presented on other top 10 legal issues. I thought Slaw readers might like to see the slides.

David Canton online business

Mana Khami top 10 – employment

Mike Mumby top 10 business . . . [more]

by Daniel Gogek*

When Justice Hackland renders his decision in the now-famous Toronto Mayor Rob Ford ‘conflict’ case, which could be any day now, he is virtually certain to find that the case, contrary to the widely reported views, actually wasn’t a conflict case at all.

Justice Hackland will no doubt explain this in clear detail, and it will be a welcome day, since the public has so far seen little more than misleading and muddled confusion on the matter.

The judgment will almost certainly make this key finding: there was no ‘conflict of interest,’ and therefore the Municipal Conflict . . . [more]

Germany has recently enacted legislation to implement the EU Consumer Rights Directive. Here is an article (from the International Law Office) describing the German legislation. Those familiar with Canadian consumer law will notice that it is considerable more detailed and directory than the Internet Sales Harmonization Template [PDF] that is the law in most provinces.

What do you think? Would our law be improved by provisions like those in the German law?

Your clients who do consumer e-commerce in the EU will run into this kind of law in all member states before long. (It must be in force . . . [more]

We’ve learned of a new Practice Direction on Filing Electronic Versions of Documents in Civil Appeals and Judicial Review Applications in the Divisional Court which will be implemented next month – it establishes a regularized process to satisfy the requirement to file electronic versions of factums and transcripts – a requirement that is already in place under Rules 61.09 and 61.12 of the Rules of Civil Procedure. The Practice Direction also encourages parties to file all electronic documents with the Divisional Court in certain proceedings. The Practice Direction does not relieve the requirement to file documents in paper format as . . . [more]

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post decrying the delays arising out of the labour dispute which affected Canada Post’s operations two summers ago. In early October, in small blurbs published in newspapers across the country (see this one from the Toronto Star), it was reported that the parties came to a settlement, agreeing to a new collective agreement. Late last week, CUPW published a synopsis of the agreement here.

The Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act, which ended the dispute and sent the parties to arbitration, required the arbitrator to ensure that the next collective . . . [more]

According to Michael Geist today on his blog, the Ontario Public School Board Association is advising school boards in Ontario to prepare to stop using Access Copyright for copyright licensing next year. They are following a legal opinion obtained by the Counsel of Ministers of Education, Copyright, that advises any material copied in Canadian K-12 schools either already has the correct permissions or would fall under fair dealing.

This follows from five Supreme Court of Canada decisions on copyright that came down this summer which gave guidance on determining fair dealing (see Martin Kratz’ coverage in his Ensuring the Balance . . . [more]