Justice Tremblay-Lamer of the Federal Court has quashed the controversial case against Adil Charkaoui, the alleged terrorist detained on a security certificate.

In his 2004 case before the Federal Court, the government made submissions that his interest in karate could infer his involvement in terrorism,

[50]To add to the demonstration of danger to national security and to any person, the Ministers link the respondent with violence and explain that he is a karate and martial arts enthusiast, and add that (see page 5, exhibit R-3):

[translation] In the past, it has been observed that some individuals involved with Al-Qaeda

There is a private member’s bill before the House of Lords in Britain — Online Purchasing of Goods and Services (Age Verification) Bill [HL] 2008-09 — to require online retailers to verify the age of people buying goods whose purchase is restricted by age, e.g. liquor or cigarettes. It is described here.

Some scepticism has been expressed about its desirability, in part based on the difficulty of actually doing what the law would require.

Do you think this kind of law would be a good idea here? Or should we accept as a fact that age restrictions on purchases . . . [more]

Fifty years ago, if we were to ask Canadians, “What are your expectations of government?” the answer would likely be: “I expect that my government should make good decisions.” Meeting this expectation by making laws, regulations and policies that treated everyone the same seemed an acceptable standard of fairness.

Within the next 20 years, provincial ombudsman offices came into being in Canada and began responding to complaints about instances where those good substantive decisions were not being made – but something else was happening too. As Canada’s population grew and society became more complex, governments at the federal, provincial and . . . [more]

♫ I’d rather steal than foot the bill, I’d rather die
I’d rather steal than pay the bill, I’d rather lie ♫

Words and music by Vaux, “Identity Theft”

Yesterday was an eye-opening day for me. Someone apparently hacked into my Twitter account and started sending out spam tweets in my name. On the scale of the range of identity theft, this was rather low – as it was solved by changing my Twitter password to something VERY strong and sending out apologies to those who unfortunately, received the spam tweets. But like a vaccine, it inoculated . . . [more]

The quintessential work of a parliamentary ombudsman requires the application of fairness principles to the decisions, actions and general conduct of the public service. These principles require that those decisions, actions and conduct be reasonable; consistent with law; just; and not oppressive or improperly discriminatory.

As a practicing lawyer for over twenty years, I am constantly reminded of the benefits of judicial and quasi-judicial avenues to determine citizens’ legal rights. These benefits include a structured procedure to determine legal rights; access to and the application of established precedents, a rich and sometimes codified body of principles to determine what evidence . . . [more]

In the most recent Weekly Checklist of federal government publications, the 2009 annual report by Justice Canada on applications for ministerial review in cases of possible miscarriages of justice is listed:

“Since 1892, the Minister of Justice has had the power, in one form or another, to review a criminal conviction under federal law to determine whether there may have been a miscarriage of justice.”

“Currently, the conviction review process begins when a person submits an application for ministerial review (miscarriages of justice), also known as a ‘conviction review application’.”

“The application for ministerial review must be supported by ‘new

Representing the best interests of the client, the adversarial system, and legally enforceable court decisions — these are the signposts on the well-travelled road to justice in the common law system. All you need is access to the resources necessary to pursue a case through to the end of the process.

But what if you lack those resources?

In the arena of administrative justice, the ombudsman’s office is a sort of “soft-power” alternative to the “hard-power” of the legal system. Accessible via a 1-800 phone call and available free of charge, this route may be the only option available to . . . [more]

Can you assert a confidentiality or privacy claim when you have willingly put the information you seek to protect on someone else’s computer system?

This question is important given the full-scale adoption of distributed computing. Yes, I mean cloud computing. But I also mean to address the issue of ISP disclosures to the police and the issue of employers who look at “personal” employee communications. These are all scenarios where a person claiming that certain information is confidential is not the owner of the medium on which it is stored. This common scenario is what makes mine an important question, . . . [more]

The Quebec Ombudsman is entrusted by the National Assembly with supervising the administration of government, protecting rights and strengthening the rule of law and the democratic values that . . . [more]

Tony Wilson, of Boughton in Vancouver, wrote in this week’s issue of Lawyer’s Weekly,

Reputation matters… But it’s not just companies and trade-mark owners who have reputations to protect. We all do, and these days, much of our personal reputation is on the web for all the world to see.

Like many professionals, physicians in Canada operate by word-of-mouth referrals, largely based on the personal experiences of patients or other referring physicians. RateMDs has become an increasingly popular site for patients to share experiences about their physician.

It’s become enough of a concern to physicians that Sam Solomon provides . . . [more]

Much to be thankful for this week in the world of biotech:

• Québec companies can be thankful for the province’s new $122 million biopharmaceutical strategy that includes $30 million for genomics and a smattering of tax initiatives;
• Mimetogen can be thankful for its latest round of funding, and McGill University and the Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research can be thankful for a spin-out that’s successful so far; and
• In Toronto, we can be thankful for a fantastic round of conferences coming up: the OGI/IDT Synthetic Biology Conference, the 50th Anniversary Celebrations for the Gairdner Awards, and

Ombudsmen are a rather strange breed of public official –- we have very robust investigative powers, such as the ability to examine witnesses under oath and to gain entry into government premises. But we have no powers of enforcement. We cannot impose a solution or make our recommendations binding.

Nevertheless, we can recommend resolutions, not only to address individual grievances, but also to promote broad policy changes. In this way, we have the potential to positively affect thousands -– even millions –- of citizens.

Our key to success is the use of moral suasion -– persuading our governments to do . . . [more]