British novelist and journalist John Lanchester wrote an interesting piece in last week’s Guardian, on his review of material leaked by whistleblower Ed Snowden.

He starts by admitting he does not share the instinctive opposition to state secrecy. As he puts it: “Democratic states need spies”. Because democracy has enemies, he argues, the right to privacy must be qualified, just as other rights are qualified. But the danger in the digital age is that “with a couple of clicks of a mouse an agent of the state can target your home phone, or your mobile, or your email, or your . . . [more]

A class action lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York on Friday against BlackBerry and some of its executives, including chief executive Thorsten Heins and chief financial officer Brian Bidulka.

The lawsuit claims that the company misled investors about their financial situation and inflating the stock value by misrepresenting how BlackBerry 10 would fare on the market against competitors. The proposed class would include shareholders who purchased stack between Sept. 27, 2012-Sept. 20, 2013.

The suit claims that BlackBerry was aware of these challenges and lay off about 40% of its workforce . . . [more]

The baby panda cam at Washington’s National Zoo is not the only digital casualty of the shutdown of U.S. federal government services that started this week [awwww man, not the cam with the adorable baby panda!].

The websites of Library of Congress and the Law Library of Congress, the world’s largest law library, are also down, although THOMAS, the legislative information site is still functioning.

Even NASA’s website is knocked out of commission.

The Washington Post, the Ars Technica site, and the government transparency NGO the Sunlight Foundation have details. . . . [more]

The Personal Information Protection And Identity Theft Prevention Act (Bill 211) has recently passed in Manitoba and takes effect upon proclamation.

This Private Member’s Bill was most recently introduced on May 28, 2013 but had been put forward a number of times previously. The Explanatory Note sets out that:

This Bill governs the collection, use, disclosure and destruction of personal information by organizations in the private sector. It also establishes a duty for those organizations to notify individuals who may be affected when the personal information the organization has collected is lost, stolen or compromised.

Winnipeg lawyer Brian Bowman, . . . [more]

The Ministry of the Attorney General in Ontario announced today that they will introduce a Bill to change how legal professions are regulated in the province.

The proposed Bill would allow the law society to recover legal costs from discipline proceedings, and will allow information protected by solicitor-client privilege to be used in hearings.

The main thrust of the Bill appears to provide more equitable representation of paralegals within the law society, increasing the number of benchers at Convocation from two to five. The committee chair, who is elected by paralegal members, can attend Convocation but cannot vote unless they . . . [more]

The Quebec Court of Appeal (decision in French) recently overturned a decision of the Quebec Human Rights Tribunal (decision in English) made in 2010 which had essentially held that any decision not to train a pilot made by the U.S. Transportation Safety Administration (TSA) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was prima facie anti-muslim and/or anti-Arab and discriminatory. Accordingly, Bombardier could not refuse to train a pilot for a license on the basis of a U.S. DHS determination that the pilot constituted a security risk. The CBC described the original case and its ramifications here. The follow up on . . . [more]

PM announces nominee for Supreme Court of Canada
30 September 2013
Ottawa, Ontario

Prime Minister Stephen Harper today announced the nomination of Mr. Justice Marc Nadon for the Supreme Court of Canada. Mr. Justice Nadon will replace Mr. Justice Morris Fish, who resigned from the Supreme Court of Canada effective August 31, 2013.

“I am pleased to announce the nomination of Mr. Justice Nadon, whose extraordinary body of legal work – as a longtime judge on both the Federal Court and the Federal Court of Appeal; judicial member of the Competition Tribunal; expert in maritime and transportation law with almost . . . [more]

On September 19, 2013 I attended the Devry Smith Frank LLP Exclusive Human Resources Seminar Series at the Don Valley Hotel & Suites in Toronto. My notes from this session follow.

Religious Accommodation in the Workplace

L. Viet Nguyen discussed the challenge of accommodating religious practice and expression in the workplace. Religion is a fundamental freedom, guaranteed in the Charter, and discrimination on the basis of creed is prohibited by the Ontario Human Rights Code.

Religious accommodation in Canada is governed by a 2-part test from the 2004 SCC case of Amselem v. Syndicat Northcrest:

1. employers are

. . . [more]

On August 8, 2013, we wrote about Quebec’s New Rules and Procedures for the province’s Immigration and Skilled Workers Program and the significant changes to the program’s selection criteria. As indicated by the Quebec government, "All applications will be processed according to the new rules in effect as of August 1, 2013, with the exception of those for which processing began prior to that date."

Quebec’s ombudsperson—le protecteur du citoyen—offered her support to Bill 52, An Act respecting end-of-life care, in a brief presented to the national assembly’s committee on health and social services. The ombudsperson’s submission to the assembly is important because as its French name indicates, the protecteur du citoyen’s mandate is to protect the rights of citizens or groups of citizens, which includes proposing amendments to existing or draft acts, regulations, directives, and administrative policies in order to improve them for the public good.

Manitoba’s Public Utilities Board (PUB) this week issued a report containing a series of recommendations to the Government of Manitoba on Manitoba’s payday loan regulations and the payday loan industry.

The report is the result of a public review and consultation process undertaken pursuant to the authority given the Board under s. 164 of The Consumer Protection Act and The Public Utilities Board Act.

Payday loans are extremely costly to borrowers. According to the accompanying news release:

A $17 fee on a two-week, $100 loan is equivalent to paying 442% annually as the cost of borrowing.

This seems particularly . . . [more]

Back in April, I posted about a case where the failure of a real estate lawyer to check their fax machine cost their purchaser client a $100,000 deposit. My post is here if anyone is looking for a refresher on the facts.

The purchaser recently appealed the decision to the Court of Appeal who, in a very short decision, upheld Justice Lederman’s decision. . . . [more]