Written by Daniel Standing LL.B., Editor, First Reference Inc.

Money and time off work for holidays are naturally important to employees, so when Queen Elizabeth II died and the Prime Minister commented on the importance of mourning her passing, unions and employees alike saw an opportunity for gains to be made. This was a pure question of interpretation, and the dispute in [2023] O.L.A.A. No. 43 was resolved in the employer’s favour based on the language of the collective agreement and the arbitrator’s determination of what a “proclamation” is. . . . [more]

Several times each month, we are pleased to republish a recent book review from the Canadian Law Library Review (CLLR). CLLR is the official journal of the Canadian Association of Law Libraries (CALL/ACBD), and its reviews cover both practice-oriented and academic publications related to the law.

Fertility: 40 Years of Change. By Maureen McTeer. Toronto: Irwin Law, 2022. ix, 266 p. Includes glossary, bibliographic references, and index. ISBN 978-1-55221-637-8 (softcover) $39.95; ISBN 978-1-55221-638-5 (PDF) $39.95. <irwinlaw.com/product/fertility-40-years-of-change>.

Reviewed by Alexandra Kwan
Digital Services & Reference Librarian
Bora Laskin Law Library, University of Toronto

Fertility: 40 . . . [more]

This submission is part of a column swap with the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) bimonthly member magazine, AALL Spectrum. Published six times a year, AALL Spectrum is designed to further professional development and education within the legal information industry. Slaw and the AALL Spectrum board have agreed to hand-select several columns each year as part of this exchange. 

Lessons from the SCALES OKN Project, Including its Cost, Data, and Development Challenges

With the increasing availability of electronic court records, many law librarians have seen more requests from their patrons to pull data from those records to answer . . . [more]

Some lawyers dread the idea of reporting a colleague in the bar to the Law Society. Others are all too eager to file complaints against other counsel, including out of spite or to try to bring down the “competition”. Most of these lawyers share something in common: they have no idea what their professional obligations are when it comes to filing law society complaints.

Not too long ago, I acted for a lawyer in a discipline hearing that stemmed from a complaint by another lawyer. These two experienced counsel had previously been respected colleagues, but for a variety of reasons . . . [more]

Disproportionate violence against Indigenous persons in Canada includes uncounted disappearances of Indigenous children, women, and men. Canada’s decades of failure to prevent and halt disappearances forms part of a long litany of grave international human rights violations against Indigenous Peoples. Continued reports of officially hushed-up violence lead to increasingly clarion allegations of genocide.

An unknown number of children remain unaccounted for after going missing from Canada’s notorious “Indian Residential Schools.” Hundreds – possibly thousands – of Indigenous women, girls, two-spirit, and others with diverse gender identities (2SLGBTQQIA) have disappeared without adequate investigation. Police have forcibly taken Indigenous persons . . . [more]

Every week we present the summary of a decision handed down by a Québec court provided to us by SOQUIJ and considered to be of interest to our readers throughout Canada. SOQUIJ is attached to the Québec Department of Justice and collects, analyzes, enriches, and disseminates legal information in Québec.

PÉNAL (DROIT) : Sous réserve de circonstances exceptionnelles, comme celles de l’affaire R. c. Hudon-Barbeau (C.S., 2017-09-06), 2017 QCCS 5977, SOQUIJ AZ-51455924, 2018EXP-358, l’article 719 (3) C.Cr. et l’intérêt public exigent qu’une période de détention provisoire interrompue par une évasion ne puisse servir de crédit aux fins de cette dernière . . . [more]

Written by Daniel Standing LL.B., Editor, First Reference Inc.

Surreptitious recordings aren’t restricted to the realms of James Bond movies and undercover police work; they crop up in employment disputes, too. Whether the decision-maker presses “play” depends on the outcome of a delicate balancing act that pits the value of the recording against the prejudice it might cause. The Court of King’s Bench of Alberta’s analysis in 2022 ABKB 813 (CanLII) is instructive to employers and employees alike. . . . [more]

The Federal Court recently analyzed what portions of postal codes were personal information and how the data could be made suitably anonymous. Anonymizing data will become increasingly important under Canada’s proposed Consumer Privacy Protection Act and Artificial Intelligence and Data Act, currently at second reading as Bill C-27.

In Cain v. Canada (Health), 2023 FC 55, the Federal Court considered an application under the Access to Information Act for disclosure of postal codes and cities for licensees entitled to grow medical marijuana. The applicant sought access to the ‘Forward Sortation Area’, namely the first three digits of the . . . [more]

A New Year Has Begun! And good legal information keeps on coming from the law librarians at the Law Library of Congress. Here are some notes from the latest releases:

January 9th, Congress.gov top 22:

“We are always working to incorporate your feedback into making Congress.gov an even better experience. One major request was one of the biggest items that the Congress.gov team worked on last year: the new Congress.gov API (application programming interface).”

January 12^th, Foreign Legal Gazette update:

“In fall 2022, the Law Library of Congress added foreign legal gazettes for the countries of Niger,

Given the backlog in our courts and administrative tribunals in Ontario, it is likely that artificial intelligence will begin to be used for routine, procedural matters to reduce delays. In the book Online Courts and the Future of Justice, Richard Susskind writes that our courts are moving towards radical change rather than more of the same. Susskind predicts that artificial intelligence will be used to adjudicate and contain claims, and that the 2020s will be a period of redeployment of lawyers and judges. By 2030, our courts will be transformed by technologies, many of which are yet to be . . . [more]