The grassroots net neutrality advocates are becoming increasingly organized. Case in point is the coalition SaveOurNet.ca hosting an open forum tomorrow evening in Toronto called Protecting Canada’s Open Internet:

SaveOurNet.ca: Protecting Canada’s Open Internet

An open forum for Toronto’s tech/web/media communities hosted by:

Matt Thompson, SavetheInternet.com and SaveOurNet.ca
Steve Anderson, SaveOurNet.ca and The Campaign for Democratic Media
Mark Kuznicki, Remarkk.com, Open Community Evangelist, TorCamp

Date/Time: Tuesday, June 24th, 6:00pm
Location: Fionn MacCool’s, 181 University Avenue @ Adelaide, Toronto
Snacks will be provided, cash bar
Your donation/sponsorship to help cover costs can be made by purchasing special tickets above.

The Times has continued its excellent series with a whole bunch of new cases: . . . [more]

The Court has spoken, and it has said that BCE won.

This is all that is said:

The appeals from the judgments of the Court of Appeal of Quebec (Montréal), Numbers 500-09-018525-089 and 500-09-018527-085, dated May 21, 2008, heard on June 17, 2008, are allowed with costs throughout. The decision of
the Court of Appeal is set aside and the trial judge’s approval of the plan of arrangement is affirmed.

The cross-appeals from the judgments of the Court of Appeal of Quebec (Montréal), Numbers 500-09-018524-082 and 500-09-018526-087, dated May 21, 2008, heard on June 17, 2008, are dismissed with

The Canadian government announced this week that it is restoring parts of the Court Challenges Program abolished in 2006.

The Program provided funding to minority, women’s and other disadvantaged groups to launch “test court cases” challenging laws that may violate equality rights under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

The government is only reestablishing the official languages minority component of the program, under the name Program to Support Linguistic Rights.

However, funding has not been restored for Charter challenges by other groups such as ethnic minorities, gays and lesbians or people with disabilities.

The new program will . . . [more]

The Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor has released its second report in as many weeks. Volume 1, “Making the Law Work for Everyone” [PDF], the Commission’s main report, was released on June 3, and is also available in French, Spanish and Arabic. Volume 2, “Working Group Reports” [PDF] was released recently.

The Commission is a cooperative venture by prominent politicians and lawyers from dozens of countries around the world — Canada is a charter member — and is “hosted” by the United Nations Development Programme. Lloyd Axworthy, a former Minister of Foreign . . . [more]

Chris Paliare was on his feet today, arguing for Friends of the Earth in a Federal Court judicial review to to force the Canadian government to follow the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, passed by Parliament a year ago. The case is a global first in seeking enforcement of the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty ratified by 180 countries, including Canada.

The Notice of Application from September 2007 is here. Press releases are here and here.

Justice lawyers argued that the Kyoto act is one of a few “unusual” statutes that Parliament never intended the courts . . . [more]

Today’s Wisconsin Law Journal raises a neat issue: whether it’s appropriate for judges to conduct their own research and decide cases on authorities not cited by the parties. I know this is an issue that we’ve blogged on before and because of Semelhago v. Paramadevan Professor Swan feels strongly about the appropriateness of it..

The Wisconsin case (decided by the Court of Appeals) settled that it wasn’t improper for a circuit court to do independent research, since a competent judge has a duty to ensure the correct law is being applied.

The case is Camacho v. Trimble Irrevocable Trust . . . [more]

The SCC has just announced that the BCE decision will be handed down tomorrow afternoon. . . . [more]

That’s what the Globe described the Steele Collection as this morning.

But for Slaw readers, the description better applies to The Times unveiling of the most significant cases reported in the paper from 1785 to 1869, including links to the actual reports from The Times of that period.

David Pannick introduces the concept. . . . [more]

Paul E. Kennedy, Chair, Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP, has released his final report on RCMP Use of the Conducted Energy Weapon (CEW) (i.e. Tasers). (A PDF version is available.

As an aside, why is it that the online news stories fail to contain a link to the original report? I don’t mind doing the ten seconds of research myself, but it does seem odd that a web-based news outlet would ignore an easily available link to the documents in question. Maybe they need librarians. . . . [more]

Google Trends has been improved lately — you can export data to a spreadsheet, for example — so I thought I’d take a look at how “copyright” has been faring as a search term in Canada over the last month. The graph that results shows clearly the increase in public interest as legislation became imminent, spiking just after the government introduced Bill C-61, and falling away within a day or two, headed for the usual level of general lack of interest.

If you click on the image of the chart, you can see an enlarged version; the “A” is the . . . [more]

Last week, the Quebec government introduced a bill in the National Assembly (provincial legislature) to tackle the issue of SLAPPs.

Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation, or SLAPPs for short, typically take the form of defamation actions brought by large corporate actors in an attempt to shut down criticism by non-governmental organizations or local citizens. The actions are seen by critics as an abuse of process, or a form of legal bullying by interests with deep pockets who try to bankrupt opponents or intimidate them into silence.

Bill 99 will amend the Quebec Code of Civil Procedure to authorize courts . . . [more]