Before I took my current position as Executive Director of the Law Commission of Ontario, I was writing an article on reconciling religious practices with what I (and many others) perceive to be dominant Canadian values (such as equality). I decided that discretion is the better part of valour and put it aside, with some considerable regret. Simon Fodden’s post about the UN’s resolution to combat defamation against religion took me back to it, though.

Both at a global and domestic level (and, of course, as they interact) how religious belief is recognized and respected, while still maintaining a commitment . . . [more]

Pity.

I was all set to see how I could shave some points off my various phone bills, only to discover that Skype is available for the iPhone today in every country in which Apple has an iTunes Store except Canada. The CBC had the story yesterday, but I missed it. According to a Skype spokesperson, the problem has to do with patents relating to the Skype application. This means that when Skype is released for the BlackBerry in May, it will be for those in every country except the one in which the thing was created. . . . [more]

Case citations exist primarily for the purpose of enabling a researcher to locate the full text of a judgment or the decision of an administrative tribunal. The primary purpose of a style guide for legal citation is to ensure that everyone can understand how various combinations of numbers, letters, brackets and punctuation make it possible for the reader to find the full text of a case referred to in a book, article or another case. There are other uses, such as case citators, but the main purpose of a case citation is to provide the means to easily locate a . . . [more]

My apologies for starting this post with a pic, but

A woman in a hotel room in Uganda is making judgments ready for the scanner.

It demonstrates graphically the challenges faced in making legal information publicly accessible through a Legal Information Institute. That’s the topic of an excellent blog posting by Kelly Anderson of Southern African Legal Information Institute – SAFLII – over at VoxPopuLII, which is a guest-blogging project sponsored by Tom Bruce and our friends across the lake at the Legal Information Institute at the Cornell Law School.

We may be complacent in North America about our . . . [more]

The Podcasting Legal Guide for Canada by Kathleen Simmons and Andy Kaplan-Myrth was first officially released back in June 2007 by Creative Commons Canada (see my Slaw post from June 29, 2007). Now they have put out a call to translate the Guide in an open source style, via Traduwiki. Their goal is to have it translated into French, although Traduwiki has the infrastructure to allow for translation into a number of different languages.

If you can help in the translation, please make your contribution via the wiki.

Photo: by Connie Crosby, also available under Creative . . . [more]

On Friday the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted a non-binding motion put forward by Pakistan aimed at “combating the defamation of religions.” (The Globe and Mail lead editorial today inveighed against the resolution.) Canada, along with nine other nations, voted against the resolution, pointing out that, among other things, rights properly belong to individuals and not entities such as religions. Twenty-one nations voted for the resolution and 14 abstained.

The text of the resolution is available online in PDF. (A nice challenge, by the way, is to see how you can get to the resolution from the front page . . . [more]

A week full of money: the Ontario Budget was announced Thursday, and it contained about $700 million of spending on innovation, including $300 million for research infrastructure and $250 million for the previously-announced Emerging Technologies Fund. Reactions were pretty positive, but badly in need of a thesaurus. The proof of the pudding is in the allocation though — in terms of benefits for biotech — the first commitment from the $205 million Ontario Venture Capital Fund turns out to be to a new VC that is more interested in software than soft tissue.

Here’s $100 . . . [more]

George Galloway, the controversial British MP scheduled to speak in Canada this week, and parties supporting him, sought an injunction at the Federal Court today.

Although I don’t agree with everything Mr. Galloway says, his views as it relates to non-military solutions to problems largely grounded in social and economic conditions, are ones that in my opinion should be heard.

I attended the hearing at the Federal Court today, where a session was conducted via videoconference to Ottawa.

Barbara Jackman, counsel for the Applicant, noted that in her 30 years of immigration practice she had never seen a case . . . [more]

The news is full of the revelation from the universities of Toronto and Ottawa that a significant internet spy network has infiltrated more than 1,200 computers in over 100 countries, an operation seemingly run from China. (See the New York Times story and the BBC story.) The report, “Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network,” a product of cooperation between the SecDev Group at Ottawa and the Munk Centre for International Studies at Toronto, is available online via Scribd. . . . [more]

I posted on SLAW over one year ago on the issue of Copies of cases for court – official print reporters versus online versions.

I continue to hear of a “preference” for copies of cases photocopied from print case law reporters, often in terms of “the judge prefers print copies.”

Although Simon Fodden correctly pointed out in a comment to that post that the Ontario Court of Appeal formally allows electronic versions of cases, as per s. 10.5 of their Practice Direction Concerning Civil Appeals in the Court of Appeal, is there a need for the Ontario legal . . . [more]

James Moore, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, appeared before the Standing Committee on Official Languages yesterday to address Bill C-232, a private members bill introduced by NDP caucus whip Yvon Godin, the simple aim of which is to require that all Supreme Court judges be fluent in both official languages.

Bill C-232 reads in English as follows:

1. Section 5 of the Supreme Court Act is renumbered as subsection 5(1) and is amended by adding the following:

(2) In addition, any person referred to in subsection (1) may be appointed a judge who understands French and English without

At different ends of the continuum, the texting between M.T. and her paramour D.B., on the one hand, and President Obama, friend to and of both new and old media (so far, anyway, although there seems to have been some resiling from free and easy use of social/new media – if only that had been the case with M.T. And D.B.), on the other, are reminders of how peripheral I feel – am – to how one interacts with society. This last sentence is proof that I’m not a natural for Twitter, but I’m pretty well out of the game . . . [more]