The Conference Board of Canada has just released its Index of Consumer Confidence.

The monthly Index of Consumer Confidence is constructed from responses to four attitudinal questions posed to a random sample of Canadian households. The latest results are based on over 2,000 telephone interviews conducted in early December 2008.

According to the News release:

The Index of Consumer Confidence stumbled for the third consecutive month in December, falling 3.3 points to 67.7 (2002 = 100), the Conference Board reported today.

“On a monthly basis, the index has now dropped significantly below early 1990s levels. Only during the recession

The U.S. Mission to Canada is pretty hip, serving up content the way you want it:

• podcast
• facebook
• twitter (@usembassyottawa)
• news feeds (RSS)
• Ambassador David Wilkins also apparently held “web chats”, the most recent his farewell chat held on December 11th (transcript here).

I wonder if the incoming ambassador will take it a step further and open up a Second Life presence ?

As a side note, I notice the U.S. Embassy in London also on Twitter: @usembassylondon; their Twitter updates (“tweets”) are also reposted on their website. . . . [more]

You know how every Christmas season the classics are shown on TV? Well that can hold for Blogs too. I throughly enjoyed preparing it a couple of years ago and intended on updating this year but the Christmas season has gotten in the way (I might be able to update it just before Christmas) but the classics are always worth repeating.

Santa in the Courts

Community Funding Corp. v. Newfoundland (Department of Government Services and Lands), 2004 NLTD 236, 243 NFLD & PEIR 255.

A very Christmasy case from NL, whereby Santa made a seasonal visit to a Bingo Hall

The concept of solicitor-client privilege goes back at least 400 years in the common law, and is one of the most well established concepts of privilege in our legal system.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) was recently caught listening and recording conversations with Mohamed Zeki Mahjoub and his lawyer since the Egyptian refugee and terrorism suspect was released on bail over a year and a half ago.

When challenged by Justice Carolyn Layden-Stevenson, CSIS lawyer Jim Mathieson agreed that any such recordings would stop, and records would be erased.

But other defence lawyers have now raised some very serious . . . [more]

These are some of the words being bandied about these days. It’s not all that promising. Or is it?

With the global economies struggling, these are undoubtedly challenging times. But with every crisis, there always seems to be some opportunities that present themselves. For the legal services sector, that opportunity comes in the form of the legal process outsourcing industry (“LPO”). What began as an idea in the United States a number of years ago has now become a robust industry. The legal process outsourcing industry started out with only a few vendors in the United States. The industry in . . . [more]

In the past two weeks, the New York Times reported that Microsoft has made a minor concession with European privacy authorities about how long it retains its log files. A committee of European privacy regulators had asked that these logs be kept for only six months. Microsoft’s response? Eighteen months.Yahoo used to keep them for thirteen months and just announced it will cut retention to 90 days. Google keeps them for nine.

The privacy implictions of these innocuous log files have been underestimated, particularly when you think about the fulsome picture of your private life that companies like Google may . . . [more]

It can’t be called Lexography, as it’s too close to lexicography, and Lexology has been taken, at least for commercial purposes. Please not Rechtographical Analysis. So what do people call the study of law that is not the practice of law? Legal Studies, perhaps, but it is a tepid choice. I think people mostly resort to specialties, such as legal history, legal theory, the philosophy of law, and the ‘law ands’: law and sociology, law and film, law and economics…

The study of law from non-legal or non-black-letter perspectives can usefully be divided into those that treat data derived from . . . [more]

The Supreme Court of Canada this morning released its reasons for judgment in BCE Inc. v. 1976 Debentureholders, 2008 SCC 69. Oddly, this doesn’t yet appear to have received much coverage in the news sites. Perhaps we’re all eager to get home early and shovel our driveways?

Having not yet finished digesting the decision, I can’t say much. There’s a wealth of interesting and essential material here: a restatement of the directors’ fiduciary duty to the corporation, and the extent to which consideration of other stakeholders’ interests may enter into that duty; the “business judgment” rule; the obligation . . . [more]

A snow day across much of the country today, a day at any event for taking it easy as the holidays approach. So nothing of any moment in the fillip today. In fact today it’s a Friday Flip.

Flip is a game devised to show some of the things that can be done with Adobe Air. But for us, today, it’s simply a game. You can play it online, or you can download it to run on your desktop, if you have Air installed. The idea is simply to cause tiles to flip so that three of a kind lie . . . [more]

♫ Dashing through the snow
In a one horse open sleigh
O’er the fields we go
Laughing all the way…♫

Words and music by James Lord Pierpont.

At this time of the year I would like to wish each and everyone the Best of the Holiday Season and a Happy New Year. This upcoming year will be a challenging one and as such I hope for Peace, Hope and Happiness for all.

As has become my tradition, at this time as my gift to you I offer a few minutes of reflection. I hope this slide show and music . . . [more]

CALI – the Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction has been mentioned a few times here at Slaw * *. I was reminded about CALI recently by a post of the top ten fall semester 2008 lessons at the Law Librarian Blog.

The CALI site has an interesting first page – a list shows the frequently used material for the day, and week by the student subgroup- 1L, 2/3L and there is a link to more zeitgeist¹ at the bottom of the page. One of the zeitgeist is the All Time Lesson Runs Since 2008-08-01. The following list, . . . [more]

The Call List-Serv is offering the Western Samoa Law Reports, 1930-1949 and 1970-1979 (2 volumes) free for the cost of shipment. Some Samoan cases are available online, though the Index is also on PacificLii.

Samoan law is described in PacificLii.

I’ve not found any reference to any Canadian court having considered a Western Samoan case. But it does seem sad that the inexorable rise of web-based caselaw has put this obscure bit of antipodean jurisprudence in the recycling hopper. Unless someone wants to claim it from the BC Courthouse Library. . . . [more]