The Ontario Superior Court of Justice rendered a judgment on the Ikea Monkey in September and it is just as weird as you would expect. However, this decision and others dealing with the custody of animals raise questions regarding animal welfare, the move towards protective rights legislation, and the remaining roadblocks to accepting notions of animal rights under the law.

The Ikea Monkey:

Most of you will remember the story of Darwin, the macaque who escaped from his owner’s locked car last December and made his way into a Toronto area Ikea store, wearing a diaper and winter coat . . . [more]

One of the features that I really, really like in the LEGISinfo service is a wee little link in the right panel of the Status Overview for a Bill. The link is titled “Similar Bills Introduced in Previous Sessions”. It is extremely useful to look at previous iterations of legislation and likewise to see how long something has been on Parliament’s agenda. I use this information regularly, most recently for a Slaw post.

Since I was on a plane last week, the title of Bill C-3 which was introduced on Friday caught my eye: “An Act to enact the . . . [more]

The fall-out from the Snowden revelations and the evident powers of the UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) continues in the UK this week. Lawyers and the Law are being portrayed in the press in a different light. See this article in the Guardian – “Parliament Has Forsaken our liberty. Law is the Last Resort.” . . . [more]

This week the Supreme Court of Canada released the decision in Cuthbertson v. Rasouli, involving a dispute between physicians and the family members of a patient who was on life support.

Summary of the Majority Decision

The dispute involved a patient who experienced severe brain damage from an infection following the removal of a benign tumour, resulting in what the physicians called a persistent vegetative state. The patient was kept alive through life support, and the physicians wanted to stop this care over and above the objections of the patient’s family members, who expressed the patient’s prior expressed intention . . . [more]

Although the Parti Québécois government has yet to table any legislation regarding it's proposed Charter of Quebec Values, and has not provided any firm date as to when it expects to do so, on October 9, 2013, a Québec solidaire member of the national assembly tabled private member's Bill 398, Charter of Quebec State Secularism in the assembly. This Bill conveys that party’s position and tries to provide a compromise to end the contentious debate sparked by the PQ’s proposal.

The Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) was first established in 1966, but came under national scrutiny during the SCC labour decision in Fraser v. Ontario. The migrant workers under this program, primarily brought to Ontario from Mexico and the Caribbean, have won another small victory in a recent Health Services Appeal and Review Board (HSARB) of Ontario decision.

Kenroy Williams and Denville Clarke were under contract under the program with Chardy Produce Ltd. until Dec. 15, 2012. Within days of starting their jobs the two workers from Jamaica were in a serious motor vehicle accident on August 9, 2012 . . . [more]

with the Ontario Court of Appeal playing the role of the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland.

See R. v. Metron Construction Corporation, 2013 ONCA 541.

A fine which bankrupts a corporation is the equivalent of a beheading.

I’m not slighting the tragedy that resulted in charges but, given what happened in Metron and why — all you need to do is read paras. 1 – 15, particularly paras. 9-15 — do you agree with the general deterrence rationale? It seems questionable, at best, to me. General deterrence of whom? (Consider the aphorism about “stupidity” in “Forest Gump”.) . . . [more]

It has been held in a US case that allegations made in comments on blog posts are not sufficiently reliable to be used in cross-examination. In this case an expert was testifying in a product liability case that the defendant’s products had never caught fire before (as the plaintiff’s had). The plaintiff’s counsel wanted to point to a number of comments in blogs about fires in some of the same manufacturer’s products. The court denied the right to use those examples.

Is that right? How much reliability do you need? Are blog comments the cross-examiner’s Wikipedia? (It was not suggested . . . [more]

Not a clamp on her nose.

Or, you can’t always get what you want, especially if the judge doesn’t agree that’s what you need.

Kidd v. Canada Life Assurance Co., 115 O.R. (3d) 256, 2013 ONSC 1868 per Perell J is instructive reading.

It is a class action in which a motion for approval of an amended settlement to replace the original settlement was rejected because the court held that the amended settlement was unfair, even if better than the original. The original settlement had become unfair to a significant portion of the class because unanticipated events that occurred . . . [more]

Almost exactly four years ago, the European Parliament passed Regulation (EC) No 1007/2009 restricting the marketing of products made from seals to:

only where the seal products result from hunts traditionally conducted by Inuit and other indigenous communities and contribute to their subsistence.

and incidentally:

the placing on the market of seal products shall also be allowed where the seal products result from by-products of hunting that is regulated by national law and conducted for the sole purpose of the sustainable management of marine resources. Such placing on the market shall be allowed only on a non-profit basis. The nature

. . . [more]

Both Google and Yahoo! have run into litigation (class actions) in the US for allegedly looking at (inspecting, reviewing, mining) information in emails carried over their free email services, gmail.com and yahoo.com. It is not alleged that any human being is opening the mail and reading it. It’s all about automated review in order to test the interests of the senders and perhaps recipients, for marketing purposes.

Would such activity be prohibited under PIPEDA in Canada too? Is that ‘collecting personal information’? Is the type of information being collected actually PI or PII?

Any use made of the information . . . [more]

Yesterday was a horrible day for officers in the Edmonton Police Service Canine Unit. They lost a colleague in the line of duty. Quanto, a decorated Police Service Dog, was killed by a creep allegedly fleeing a stolen vehicle. Note where allegedly and creep are in that sentence.

Today’s Globe and Mail and National Post are reporting that there are calls to change the Criminal Code to allow for stiffer sentencing for killing or injuring a police service animal.

Let me preface what follows with the statement that I love my dog and even some other dogs that are . . . [more]