Last week the Ontario government announced a radical change to the manner in which cannabis will be sold and consumed in the Province of Ontario.

Highlights of the announcement, which was initially made by Ontario Finance Minister Vic Fedeli and Attorney General Caroline Mulroney, and followed by the introduction of Bill 36, An Act to enact a new Act and make amendments to various other Acts respecting the use and sale of cannabis and vapour products in Ontario (or the “Cannabis Statute Law Amendment Act, 2018” for short), include the following:

Timeline for Implementation

The government confirmed that when legalization . . . [more]

On Wednesday, Ontario’s new government announced a change in policy for cannabis use, indicating that they will allow it to be used anywhere where tobacco is smoked when it is legalized on Oct. 17, 2018, and not restricted to residential homes as previously planned. This move would align the province’s policy with the Smoke-Free Ontario Act, with the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario (AGCO) set up as the proposed regulator to issue private store licences.

One of the ancillary effects of this is that residents in the province will invariably be consuming cannabis outside of the home, and . . . [more]

The Administrative Labour Tribunal in Quebec recently held that an employer cannot terminate a worker with a criminal conviction for acts of sexual abuse as it constitutes discrimination based on criminal records. Moreover, the nature of the criminal offence does not automatically justify the dismissal of an employee. . . . [more]

You may have read about the Supreme Court of Canada deciding Rogers can be paid its costs for telling a copyright owner the identity of movie downloading customers. What isn’t talked about is the notice and notice system that puts this in motion.

A summary of the Rogers v Voltage decision is here. Omar has written about this on Slaw as well.

This is a complex and controversial issue. The essence is that sections 41.25 and 41.26 of the Copyright Act allow the owner of a copyright (eg a movie studio) to create a notice to send to people . . . [more]

Despite its high threshold, the British Columbia Supreme Court upheld the just cause dismissal of a long-service management employee following a series of confidentiality breaches. . . . [more]

Introduction

This week has been an unprecedented one in Canadian history, and one that will invariably result in development of novel Charter jurisprudence.

On Sept. 12, 2018, the Ontario legislature introduced Bill 31 – Efficient Local Government Act, 2018 in response to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision on Sept. 10, 2018 that ruled Bill 5 – Better Local Government Act, 2018 was unconstitutional, as it violated the s. 2(b) Charter rights of the candidates in the upcoming municipal election due to the timing of the Bill, and the impact on the voters due to its content.[1] This . . . [more]

The Ontario Superior Court of Justice recently held that the continued receipt of long-term disability benefits can legally frustrate an employment contract. . . . [more]

The Court of Justice of the European Union is hearing arguments on whether the right to be forgotten under EU law (notably based on the Spanish case from 2014 that started all this discussion) should be applied globally by search engines. Here is The Guardian’s report.

You will notice that the report closes with a mention of the Canadian Supreme Court decision (in Equustek, not named) where the court made its takedown order against Google globally. I did not think the SCC dealt well with the arguments being raised at the CJEU, namely that if France, or Canada, . . . [more]

When the Copyright Modernization Act was passed in 2012 with Bill C-11, most observers acknowledged that stronger enforcement mechanisms were needed for online piracy. However, even at that time there were concerns about the measures undertaken to address these concerns.

Most controversial were the notice-and-notice provisions that came into force on Jan. 2, 2015, which require ISPs and website hosts to convey notices of copyright infringement allegations to customers using their services.

The almost immediate effect was thousands of these notices being provided to Canadian consumers, many of them making demands for monetary settlement. The system was also subject to . . . [more]

The Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family, an independent organization affiliated with the University of Calgary, closed on 31 August 2018. The closure of the Institute is somewhat of a national tragedy, given that it was one of the very few organizations conducting empirical research on family law, justice processes and access to justice in Canada, and was the inevitable result of today’s singularly infelicitous funding climate.

The Institute has conducted some remarkable, innovative and often ground-breaking work over the 31 years of its existence. Highlights include some of the first work on the financial consequences of . . . [more]

The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal clarified that stress from a workplace investigation is a non-compensable workplace event. . . . [more]

In a recent decision, the Ontario Court of Appeal clarified that the limitation period for a wrongful dismissal claim does not start at the end of employment, but rather as soon as working notice is provided. . . . [more]