On March 28, 2019, the Coalition Avenir Quebec government tabled Bill n°21: An Act respecting the laicity of the State to fulfill an election promise to ensure the religious neutrality of the state and prohibit many public sector employees from wearing religious symbols at work. The proposed legislation is being studied in parliament at this moment.

After the failed attempts of the Parti Québécois with its charter of values in 2014, and the Liberal Party with Bill 62 in 2017 with an Act to foster adherence to State religious neutrality and, in particular, to provide a framework for requests for . . . [more]

When Toby’s Act (Bill 33) passed in Ontario in 2012, the jurisdiction became the first in Canada to explicitly add gender identity to a human rights code.

Ontario’s Human Rights Commission had previously taken the position that gender identity was still a protected ground under the Ontario Human Rights Code based on the ban against sex discrimination, and the Human Rights Tribunal agreed with this interpretation in several cases, including in Hogan v. Ontario (Health and Long-Term Care).

In this 2006 case, the province argued that if the Ontario Code intended the definition to extend to these . . . [more]

The Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta has published guidelines on how to manage emails to minimize organizational risks and expenses that could be caused by a privacy breach. The guidelines indicate that “In light of the vast quantities of email sent and received daily by an organization, email management is not just a records management issue, but is also a necessary business process” that should be managed in accordance with records management principles and the requirements of Alberta’s access to information and privacy legislation. Although the guidance provided in this document is directed at managing emails, . . . [more]

On March 19, 2019, the federal government tabled its election budget, the 2019-20 budget. The budget expects a deficit of $14.9 billion for fiscal 2018-2019 and forecasts deficits of $19.8 billion for 2019-2020 and $19.7 billion for fiscal 2020-2021. The budget does not include any personal or corporate tax rate changes; however, the budget does include measures of interest to employers and payroll (some paraphrase included): . . . [more]

A few years ago, the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL) was reported here to be considering a project on identity management and trust services. That report outlined some of the legal and practical issues that these matters raise, and some of the options for going forward.

To nobody’s surprise, UNCITRAL did adopt a project on this topic, and its Working Group on Electronic Commerce has been considering it since 2017. A list of the principal policy documents and records of the Working Group’s discussions is here.

Recently the UNCITRAL Secretariat has released two Working Papers in . . . [more]

Today’s “#MeToo” climate and questions about when someone who has been accused of sexual misconduct, although not convicted of it, should be allowed back into the public sphere (to direct films, do comedy routines, assume an executive role in business or whatever) has been much in the media recently. Although not explicitly, a recent decision of the Ontario Court of Appeal tells us that even if the impact of someone’s return might have significant impact on a victim’s working — and broader — life, return may occur. The final result in Colistro v. Tbaytel 2019 ONCA 197 is not unlike . . . [more]

The common law in Ontario has proven relatively adept at developing new torts, in particular in the area of privacy law, to change and adapt to relatively stagnant or unsatisfactory statutory developments.

Although the tort of intimidation has long been recognized as giving rise to a cause of action, as affirmed in cases such as Tran v. University of Western Ontario, the status of the tort of harassment has been much more divided.

The Supreme Court of Canada affirmed in the 1981 decision of Seneca College of Applied Arts and Technology v. Bhadauria that human rights legislation . . . [more]

Including promotional items in trademark use descriptions will require a different approach under the new trademark rules. On June 17, 2019, the Trademarks Act and the registration process are changing dramatically. Trademark applications will have to classify the goods and services in the use description according to the international Nice classifications. There are 34 classifications of goods, and 11 classes of services.

Trademark filing fees and trademark renewal fees will be class based. Applications containing more than 2 classes of goods and services, and all renewals, will be more expensive than they are now.

Conventional wisdom was to include promotional . . . [more]

When the Ontario’s Libel and Slander Act was amended in 2015 under the Protection of Public Participation Act, the explicit purpose of implementing the 2010 recommendations by the Anti-SLAPP Advisory Panel. Since that time, the interpretation of these provisions continue to evolve.

This past week, the Ontario Court of Appeal released its decision in Lascaris v. B’nai Brith Canada, overturning the decision of the Superior Court of Justice that had granted the anti-SLAPP motion under s. 137.1(3) of the Courts of Justice Act to dismiss the action.

Justice Rady of the Superior Court outlined the public interest purpose . . . [more]

In France, the right to disconnect was made law on January 1, 2017, “requiring employers to have clear policies in place regarding when employees engage in workplace communication outside of the office and when on vacation.” This law is because of a French Supreme Court Case in 2001 that “held that “the employee is under no obligation either to accept working at home or to bring there his files and working tools”. In 2004, this principle was confirmed again by the French Supreme Court which added in this case, “the fact that [the employee] was not reachable on his cell . . . [more]

The interaction between law enforcement and notions of privacy in the security of our homes has always been a special focus of s. 8 Charter rights. The treatment of the home as a special place in the law was described by Justice Binnie in R. v. Tessling as a nuanced hierarchy protecting privacy of places, used to evaluate the reasonableness of a person’s expectation of privacy.

This privacy interest is not absolute, and although the “dwelling house” enjoys the greatest expectation of privacy, the perimeter space around the home enjoys a diluted measure of this same expectation.

One example of . . . [more]

Important changes to the Canada Labour Code were recently made (i.e., Bill C-63 and C-86, among others), but the government’s work to modernize the Canada Labour Code isn’t done yet. On February 20, 2019, the federal government convened an independent expert panel to provide advice on five complex workplace issues facing Canadian employers and employees due to the changing nature of work. . . . [more]