The dead puck era in the National Hockey began roughly in 1995 and lasted through the lockout of 2004. The dead puck era was marked by stifling defense and low scoring games as teams employed a defensive strategy known as the “neutral zone trap” (sub nom the trap). The basics of the neutral zone trap was that a team would dump the puck into the offensive zone and then mount little or no forecheck in the offensive zone in favour of placing all of their players in the neutral zone in order to impede the other team from advancing through . . . [more]

In addition to the anti spam provisions of CASL, it contains provisions against malware starting in January 2015. It imposes disclosure and consent requirements for software providers in certain situations.

Unfortunately, those provisions are perhaps more ill-advised and unclear than the anti-spam provisions. They have the potential to make life difficult for software companies, create additional record keeping responsibilities where none are needed, and could even hurt Canadian consumers if foreign software developers simply don’t sell their products in Canada to avoid compliance.

The IT law bar is collectively scratching their heads trying to understand what the provisions mean in . . . [more]

Well-known University of Toronto law professor Kent Roach has reacted to this week’s two terrorist attacks in St-Jean and Ottawa with a post about The Canadian Terrorist Attacks and Canadian Counter-Terrorism Law on the US-based Just Security website.

Roach’s text examines some of the existing powers in the Criminal Code that can be used against suspected terrorists, and discusses the issues surrounding proposed amendments that would expand powers of Canadian intelligence services.

Roach is the author of The 9/11 Effect: Comparative Counter Terrorism Law (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

He served as research director for the commission of inquiry into the . . . [more]

Something from the recent Throne Speech here in Nova Scotia struck me as quite odd. Specifically, a local news story quoted that the Premier “promised in the throne speech to ban the use of e-cigarettes in public places.”

Nova Scotia would not be the first jurisdiction to take this step and it would join a long list of jurisdictions which have enacted such legislation or by-laws. I am not an advocate of e-cigarettes nor did I understand much about them prior to doing some research for this post, but my understanding of some of the logic behind this intended ban . . . [more]

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal recently found that when a Chinese Canadian employee was terminated from his employment, he was discriminated against on the ground of place of origin, and partly because of his lack of English proficiency.

Following the European Court of Justice decision earlier this year in Google Spain v AEPD and Mario Costeja González, Google has had a flood of requests to have webpages deleted from their index. More than a third of these requests, or over 60,000 links, come from the U.K.

Google released data today demonstrating where the requests originate from:

To date, Google has evaluated nearly 500,000 links for removal. More than half of all urls reviewed by Google are removed, meaning that there are still many others that they do not.

This data also reveals that the vast majority of . . . [more]

Today, justice was denied to Zahra Kazemi and her family. After an eight year struggle, the Supreme Court of Canada released the decision many of us feared: Iran and its functionaries are immune from the civil jurisdiction of the Canadian courts for having arrested, tortured and murdered Ms. Kazemi, a Canadian journalist.

There will be time to pick apart the decision over the coming months, and years. Right now, though, I can’t do much more than shake with frustration and grief. In my 2009 comment on this case, when it was still pending before the Quebec Superior Court, I . . . [more]

Obligated organization in Ontario need to be aware of their ever-evolving obligations under the AODA, and should be developing a strategy to ensure compliance now and in the future. Are you up to date with your compliance under the AODA?

A recent family law decision applied the existing legal principles relating to the awarding of legal costs to self-represented litigants. These principles were first set out by the Court of Appeal over 15 years ago.

In short:

– a self-represented litigant does not have an automatic right to costs;

– the matter remains fully within the discretion of the trial judge;

– to be considered eligible for costs, the self-represented litigant must demonstrate that they devoted time and effort to do work ordinarily done by a lawyer retained to conduct the litigation and in doing so incurred an opportunity cost . . . [more]

The thing about writing for a blog (especially one that commits you to weekly posts) is that often times you can only barely introduce a topic or idea.

And undoubtedly one of the best things about blogs is that cursory introductions are totally fine. Want popcorn commentary on a landmark decision from the country’s highest court? Bam. Here you go.

The Supreme Court of Canada’s October 2, 2014 majority decision regarding the (non) constitutionality of pricey court fees in Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia v. British Columbia (Attorney General), 2014 SCC 59, is big news here in BC. . . . [more]

The Prime Minister decided this week to send Canadian aircraft to Iraq and possibly to Syria to strike ISIS targets in these countries. The attacks will be exclusively by air and will not involve land troops. The motion is expected to be debated in Parliament tomorrow.

The threats posed by ISIS is certainly unique, and is not easily solved. Nobody suggests that these airstrikes alone will eliminate the problem. Opposition groups have already rejected the plan, indicating that the case for such involvement has not been properly presented. The self-defence basis and humanitarian grounds for doing so have already been . . . [more]

Despite concerns from many that the government was lagging in its enforcement of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA), the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario (ADO) has been issuing orders to comply with the Act, particularly the section 14 requirement to produce and file an accessibility report with the directorate.