Like many Slaw readers, I monitor legislation in Canada, especially federal legislation. Our 1st session of the 40th parliament officially began on November 18, 2008 with the Throne Speech on November 19, 2009. We are now on day 8 of this parliament and Bill C-2, the first government sponsored bill, has yet to appear on the Projected Order Of Business or the Order and Notice Paper.

As I clicked my shortcut to LegisINFO and saw no Bill C-2 again today, I found myself wondering if this long delay was out of the ordinary. To do a fast grab of . . . [more]

Earlier this week, Facebook won a huge judgment – $832 million to be exact – against a Canadian spam lord, Adam Guerbuez. This was the biggest award ever made under the US federal anti-spam legislation. Facebook doesn’t expect to collect much from the judgment, but it’s definitely another blow against spammers.

in an article in today’s Globe, Michael Geist explains that Facebook brought their action in California rather than Canada because Canadian law doesn’t provide an adequate remedy against spammers. He describes our own laws as “simply inadequate”.

I wonder if anti-spam legislation is on the Tories’ agenda for . . . [more]

I just arrived home and am catching up on the terrorist attack on Mumbai this evening (tomorrow morning in India).

BlogTalkRadio SAJA (South Asian Journalist Association) are holding web-based phone-in discussions every 12 hours, 10 – 11:30 am/pm ET or 8:30 – 10:00 am/pm Indian time. The guests on the first call (evening of Nov. 26 in Canada) included Benjamin Piven, former Fulbright Scholar in Mumbai and Suketu Mehta, author, “Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found.” Author Rohit Bhargava has posted the details on his Influential Marketing Blog.

For those wishing to follow the latest news, some . . . [more]

In an emotional farewell to staff, Anne Roland, Registrar of the Supreme Court of Canada since 1990, reminisced yesterday about the many changes she has seen at Canada’s highest judicial institution where she started working 32 years ago. Roland retired this week.

As Registar, she acted as the Court’s top administrative official, with responsibilities for appointment and supervision of Court staff, the management of the Library and the Registry, and the publication of the Supreme Court Reports.

Madame Roland emigrated from France and joined the Canadian public service some 37 years ago, working first in translation before moving to the . . . [more]

E-Tips, from Deeth Williams Wall, informs us that Gary Fung, a Canadian web entrepreneur, has filed a petition in the B.C. Supreme Court seeking a declaration that his site, isoHunt, does not infringe the Copyright Act. isoHunt is an extremely popular BitTorrent search engine. Fung is currently being sued by the Motion Pictures Association of America and has received a take-down notice from the Canadian Recording Industry Association. His petition is available online [PDF], as is his analysis of his situation. . . . [more]

We blogged yesterday about the Report that Professor Moon made to the Canadian Human Rights Commission on whether hate speech on the web should be regulated by the CHRC or handled differently.

The Canadian Jewish Congress has issued a strong statement of dissent, quoting Mark Freiman of Mccarthy Tétrault. [Mark had done a commentary on the earlier CHRC ruling.] Here is the Globe op-ed piece by Mark as well as a CBC discussion.

If, as we suggested yesterday, the issue goes to the Commons Justice Committee – we can expect a spirited debate. . . . [more]

Ecojustice, formerly Sierra Legal Defence Fund, and pro bono lawyers from Paliare Roland Barristers, counsel for Friends of the Earth, have appealed the Federal Court decision in Friends of the Earth v. Canada (Governor in Council), 2008 FC 1183 (CanLII).

The court in that case held that it could not deal with the issue of whether the Minister of the Environment had failed to comply with the duty imposed on him under s.5 of the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, 2007, because the issue under the legislation was not justiciable. . . . [more]

The internal policy of the Canadian Human Rights Commission concerning the accommodation of mental illness has been published [PDF] by that organization as a model that may prove helpful in the development of such a policy by other organizations.

[via Thoughts from a Management Lawyer] . . . [more]

Yesterday saw the release of Windsor Law Professor Richard Moon’s long-awaited report on Internet Hate Speech and the jurisdiction of the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

The editorial writers are lapping it up – here is the Globe and the National Post, as well as the CBC’s more measured coverage.

The principal recommendation of this report is that section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act be repealed so that the censorship of Internet hate speech is dealt with exclusively by the criminal law.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has described the Moon report “an important contribution” to the discussion . . . [more]

At Slaw we’ve referred from time to time to the practice in some US courts of declining any precedential value to cases.

This week’s Minnesota Lawyer brings the debate into sharp focus with discussions of a recent case that appears to have been buried, despite its value. The case involved whether punitive damages could be awarded in defamation cases.

In Canada, the proliferation of electronically accessible case law of dubious value makes one nostalgic for the days when a stroke of the DLR editor’s pen could consign such case law to non-existence. . . . [more]

There’s a possibly apocryphal story of Lord Denning MR changing his mind on who won an appeal after the judgment had been released to the WLR so that the WLR version has the plaintiff winning 2-1 while the All ER version had the defendant winning 2-1. [Challenge to those who have free access to Lexis – was there such a case?]

But this week’s Lawyer’s Weekly refers to a case being redacted by the Supreme Court of Canada after it had been released. The deletion was a reference to the Federal Government’s withdrawal from the Charter Challenges programme.

The counsel . . . [more]

From national politics let’s turn our sights to the local variety: Bob LeDrew over at Flacklife has picked up the newsdurhamregion.com story of Oshawa City Councillor Robert Lutczyk who claims to hold the copyright on the name “University of Ontario Institute of Technology” among other names. Thing is, the University of Ontario Institute of Technology already existed before he supposedly copyrighted the name in 2005. . . . [more]