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) : Le juge devait tenir compte de la compréhension actuelle de la nocivité de la violence sexuelle contre des enfants et des principes énoncés dans R. c. Friesen (C.S. Can., 2019-10-16), 2020 CSC 9, SOQUIJ AZ-51680674, 2020EXP-902, en prononçant la peine relativement à une infraction d’attentat à la . . . [more]

Each Friday, we share the latest job listings from Slaw Jobs, which features employment opportunities from across the country. Find out more about these positions by following the links below, or learn how you can use Slaw Jobs to gain valuable exposure for your job ads, while supporting the great Canadian legal commentary at Slaw.ca.

Current postings on Slaw Jobs:

• Lawyer (Full-time) | Etobicoke, ON
  (Kostyniuk & Greenside Lawyers)
• Tax Lawyer – Canadian Sales Tax (Full-time) | Vancouver, BC
  (Thorsteinssons LLP)
• Real Estate Legal Assistant (Full-time) | Abbotsford, BC
  (Waterstone Law Group LLP)
• Litigation Association (Full-time) | Vancouver, BC
  (Bernard

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

Hindsight is always 20/20, but in reading the decision Smorhay v Goodfellow Law, 2021 AHRC 170 (CanLII), one wonders how the employer did not foresee serious problems on the horizon. Corinne Smorhay was a legal assistant. She had worked in law offices before but had no construction law experience. Despite this, a headhunter recommended her to Goodfellow Law, a construction law firm that needed a secretary who could hit the ground running. When she was the only applicant who showed up for the interview, she got the . . . [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.

Is Law Computable?: Critical Perspectives on Law and Artificial Intelligence. Edited by Simon Deakin and Christopher Markou. Oxford; New York: Hart Publishing, 2020. xxi, 320 p. Includes bibliographic references and index. ISBN 978-1-5099-3706-6 (hardback) $130.05.

Reviewed by Tim Knight
Head of Technical Services
Osgoode Hall Law School Library, York University
In  . . . [more]

How to Be a Good Litigation Junior is the title of a CLEBC full-day conference every two years.

This year as I prepared for my presentation, I couldn’t help but think about what I might say if I was invited to a similar conference aimed at senior lawyers: “How to be a Good Litigation Partner.”

Many well-meaning, kind and ethical litigation partners have some blind spots when it comes to their leadership.

Leadership is a learned skill that develops with attention and effort. There are so many books and courses on leadership because it isn’t easy. It is all about . . . [more]

In Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2022 ONSC 1303, Justice Mandhane of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice writes about the tort of family violence. In this case, the parties disputed four issues. The four issues were: “property equalization, child support, spousal support, and the Mother’s claim for damages in relation to the Father’s alleged abuse during the marriage”.

In the groundbreaking decision, Justice Mandhane writes at paragraph 4: “On the most contentious issue, the Mother’s claim for damages, I am prepared to award $150,000 in compensatory, aggregated, and punitive damages for the tort of family violence. I recognize that . . . [more]

Each Wednesday we tell you which three English-language cases and which French-language case have been the most viewed* on CanLII and we give you a small sense of what the cases are about.

For this last week:

1. Ontario v. Trinity Bible Chapel, 2022 ONSC 1344

[89] Limits on religious freedom can arise at one of two stages: a) under s. 2(a) itself; and b) under s. 1 of the Charter. Where s. 2(a) is infringed, the government may seek to justify the limit under s. 1 of the Charter. I will come to deal with s. . . . [more]

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is continuing to hold discussions on a proposal for a waiver of intellectual property rights clauses in its Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) Agreement that bear on Covid-19 patents, such as medications and vaccinations. India and South Africa first proposed the waiver on October 2, 2020. It was a time within that first year of the pandemic amid great anticipation of Covid vaccinations on the horizon. The waiver represented a hope for a more equitable roll out of preventative treatments for fighting this scourge, without the usual access barriers posed by intellectual property . . . [more]

Here are excerpts from the most recent tips on SlawTips, the site that each week offers up useful advice, short and to the point, on practice, research, writing and technology.

Research & Writing

Thanks (Again)
Neil Guthrie

I wrote previously about thank-you (with the hyphen, it’s noun or adjective only – not the actual expression of thanks). Someone I follow on Twitter (@BrendanCormier) identified another problematic usage involving gratitude: thanks in advance, which he calls ‘one of the most insidiously awful phrases in the english language’. … . . . [more]

“The value we create is directly related to how much valuable information we can produce, how much trust we can earn, and how often we innovate.”
– Seth Godin, Author

I have been thinking a lot about value lately. For so many of us, work is busier than ever and our social calendars are finally starting to fill up again. But, as legal marketers, it can sometimes feel like you are doing everything in the world but, accomplishing virtually nothing at all. How does one maximize and demonstrate their value? How can a law firm provide meaningful value to . . . [more]

Political scientists yearn for the day when party policy has the most significant weight in democratic elections. Instead, snappy slogans and flash ideas usually are more effective at attracting the attention of the electorate.

Still, when a government is elected, they are required to implement ideas through policy. This is usually done in the form of mandate letters to cabinet ministers, which outlines the objectives they will work to accomplish, and the inherent challenges the minister is facing in this role.

In a free and open democracy, should the public have access to these mandate letters? On one hand, the . . . [more]