Class proceedings were introduced, in part, to promote access to justice, and continue to play an important role in addressing social wrongs. The Supreme Court of Canada described this in Western Canadian Shopping Centres Inc. v. Dutton as follows,

28 …by allowing fixed litigation costs to be divided over a large number of plaintiffs, class actions improve access to justice by making economical the prosecution of claims that would otherwise be too costly to prosecute individually. Without class actions, the doors of justice remain closed to some plaintiffs, however strong their legal claims. Sharing costs ensures that injuries

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]

Teaching isn’t easy. It can be rewarding, fulfilling, and at times challenging, but is also considerably variable between instructor to instructor.

In the interest of providing high quality education, most post-secondary institutions use a variety of metrics to ensure that the best instructors are attracted and retained to their schools, to help best optimize the educational experience. One of these tools are student evaluations in teaching (SET), where the individuals who are regularly exposed to the instructor are provided the most direct form of input about the pedagogical tools employed.

As any instructor will tell you though, not all educational . . . [more]

Reversing the trial judge’s decision, on April 19, 2018, the Court of Appeal for Ontario concluded that an employee can still benefit from a former employer’s long-term disability coverage despite discovering the disability while working for a new employer. The exclusionary language did not limit the long-term disability coverage to current employees, and was extended by the Court to apply to undisclosed disability claims that arose during employment.

Was the former employer really accountable to provide LTD coverage even after the employee quit? Here’s what happened: . . . [more]

In a dramatic about-face, the Ontario government announced today that privately owned cannabis retail will be coming to the province.

Under the newly-announced framework, the sale of recreational cannabis will initially be available only online in the province when the Federal Government brings the Cannabis Act into force on October 17, 2018. However, the provincial government will be implementing a privately owned retail framework which will be developed after consultation with a variety of stakeholders. These consultations are set to begin almost immediately.

Municipalities will have a large say over the shape of private retail in the province as the . . . [more]

It all started out with a tweet.

Canada’s Foreign Policy twitter handle expressed concerns with human rights issues in Saudi Arabia, a position that was neither new nor novel. The resulting twitter spat turned into a full-blown diplomatic crisis, with expelling of the Canadian ambassador by the Saudi government, freezing of assets, banning new trade with Canada, and sale of Canadian assets.

The relationship between Canada and Saudi Arabia is certainly complicated, but it hasn’t been this strained since the oil crisis of 1973. For all of the various trade matters between Canada and Saudi Arabia, the most . . . [more]

There is a recent article that suggested that implementing a scent-free or fragrance-free environment policy would help employers know if their employee is high at work from cannabis use, and what actions to take when they catch them high at work.

Most people are familiar with smoking dried cannabis in hand-rolled cigarettes, pipes or water pipes-but people can consume cannabis in many forms, including: “vaping”; eaten in cannabis-infused foods called “edibles” (e.g., cooking oils and drinks); applied as oils, ointments, tinctures, cream and concentrates (e.g., butane hash oil, resins and waxes); and of course, ingested as oral pills and oral . . . [more]

Canada’s unique health care system, which is publicly funded but largely privately administered, is one of the most important political and public policy issues in our society.

Negotiations between physicians and the government in Ontario in past years has been strained, with the parties unable to achieve an agreement on Jan. 15, 2015. In the years that have followed, there has been greater scrutiny of these negotiations, especially by members of the public who are concerned about the effect on patient care. Ontario spends $11.6 billion on compensation to doctors, $7.9 billion of which is fee-for-service under the Ontario Health . . . [more]

On Oct. 20, 2018, the City of Toronto its 86th municipal election, the largest city in Canada, with the 6th largest government in the country and nearly 8% of the entire country’s population. On July 27, 2018, just a few months before this election, the new Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, announced that he will reduce the number of city council seats from 44 to 25.

There have been calls supporting and opposing this exact change, years before Premier Ford won the provincial election this year. Other cities around the world have effectively functioned with similar numbers in representation. The . . . [more]

New Brunswick violence and harassment provisions under the Occupational Health and Safety Act and General Regulation 91-191 aimed at identifying and preventing violence and harassment in the workplace will take effect September 1, 2018. Currently, New Brunswick is the only Atlantic province that does not specifically address the issue of workplace violence in its health and safety laws. All Atlantic provinces do not currently address harassment in health and safety laws. New Brunswick will be the first.

While certain occupational groups, such as health-care workers, tend to be more at risk of workplace violence or harassment, these new regulations will . . . [more]

The involvement of children in our legal system is one that requires particular sensitivity and care, given their own limits of autonomy, but also the long-lasting consequences that the justice system can have on them. Access to information as to how our system works is central to this ability to assess its function.

The Ontario Court of Appeal recently reversed in Ontario (Children’s Lawyer) v. Ontario (Information and Privacy Commissioner) a decision that would release information held by the Office of the Children’s Lawyer (OCL), which will make any independent review of their function by third-parties more challenging in the . . . [more]

The Ontario Superior Court recently awarded 30 months’ notice period and bonus payments in full during that notice period to a long-service employee. The Judge noted that termination without cause in this case resulted in forced resignation as comparable employment was not available for the 62-year-old employee who had devoted 37 years to the company, and was therefore entitled to 30 months’ notice period. Moreover, the altered conditions of employment whereby bonus payments would only be payable if employed on date of payout was struck down as it was not appropriately communicated to affected employees-as the Judge noted that posting . . . [more]