The most recent edition of Legal Aid in Canada by the federal Department of Justice reports that legal aid plans in Canada provided 1.2 million free duty counsel services; to people in-court and in-custody accused in criminal courts, appearing unrepresented in civil courts primarily in family court and at immigration hearings during 2019-2020.[1] The majority of duty counsel services were for criminal matters (86%), with 14% of services provided in civil matters. Duty counsel is an important part of legal aid in Canada and 1.2 million duty counsel services is an important milestone. The achievement of this milestone is . . . [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

End of Life
Neil Guthrie

This comes to all of us, whether we want it or not. Increasingly nowadays, one can make a conscious end-of-life decision: note the hyphens you’ll need in order to make the phrase an adjective. … . . . [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.

CONSTITUTIONNEL (DROIT) : La Cour d’appel a conclu que les articles 5 et 10 de la Loi encadrant le cannabis, qui prévoient l’interdiction totale de possession de plantes et de cultures de cannabis à des fins personnelles, ont pour objectif d’assurer l’efficacité du monopole d’État confié à la Société . . . [more]

On June 24, 2021, in Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v Baltimore Police Department,[1] the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit On Rehearing En Blanc decided that Baltimore’s use of an aerial surveillance pilot program violated the Fourth Amendment.[2] The court remanded the matter for further proceedings consistent with the opinion. In this article, I describe the technology that was used in Baltimore, review what transpired leading up to the decision, explain the decision, and suggest insights that Canada may take from the decision.

The Program

In March, 2020, the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) decided . . . [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:

• • Senior Specialist, Marketing Projects (Full-time) | Calgary, AB or Vancouver, BC
    (Bennett Jones)

I don’t know if you’re like me but despite being a heavy user of e-mail, I am still often puzzled by it. More specifically, by how we often fail to use it to its full potential.

How many times does it happen that you receive an e-mail from a professional contact, a client or a supplier/vendor, perhaps even from an important work colleague, and you have so much trouble deciphering its meaning that you pick up the phone or get on chat to ask the sender what exactly they want you to do?

Given how insanely busy so many of . . . [more]

Written by Daniel Standing LLB., Editor at First Reference Inc.

According to Transport Canada, distracted driving happens when the driver’s attention is taken from the road and is focused on something else, like texting, talking to someone in the car or on the phone, eating or drinking, or using the entertainment or navigation system. It is a serious problem; statistics in the National Collision Database reveal that distracted driving contributed to an estimated 21 percent of fatal collisions and 27 percent of serious injury collisions in 2016. In response to the threat posed by distracted driving, all Canadian jurisdictions introduced . . . [more]

Given recent events, examining the impact of criminal law on Indigenous people should be on the agenda of every criminal lawyer in Canada. Lawyers and judges need to understand that cases involving Indigenous accused persons and victims require specific knowledge and skills. Jonathon Rudin’s “Practitioner’s Handbook on Indigenous People and the Criminal Justice System” provides both the means to understand the case law and valuable insights into representing indigenous clients.

This book should be considered to be an “essential” reference work. Mention of this book has previously been made on Slaw. The first time was when it was announced 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. Dr. Chuang v. Fogler Rubinoff, 2021 ONSC 5942

[21] The parties submit that none of the concerns expressed by the Court of Appeal in the recent decision of Butera v. Chown, Cairns LLP, 2017 ONCA 783, are relevant in this case. The parties are already before the court pursuant to the Defendant’s summary judgment motion and therefore granting partial summary . . . [more]

Leading Legal Disruption: Artificial Intelligence and a Toolkit for Lawyers and the Law
Giuseppina D’Agostino, Aviv Gaon and Carole Piovesan
2021 Thompson Reuters
ISBN 978-0-7798-9871-8

In an age where so many clients that I assisted were implementing machine learning systems and other artificial intelligence (AI) systems this book, Leading Legal Disruption: Artificial Intelligence and a Toolkit for Lawyers and the Law, is a welcome resource.

The book is a collection of essays that explore different facets of artificial intelligence and thereby, together, build up a more robust understanding for the reader on many of the practical and policy challenges that . . . [more]

The United States has taken the next step in its trade dispute with Canada and asked for the establishment of a panel to examine its complaint regarding Canada’s administration of its tariff-rate quotas (TRQ) allocations for 14 dairy products.[1]

In its request, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) [2] claims that Canada’s allocation of import quotas exclusively to “producers” violates the terms of Canada’s commitments in the schedule to annex 2-B[3] of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA). The request was made pursuant to Article 31.6 state-to-state dispute resolution provisions available when a CUSMA party’s rights have been nullified . . . [more]