While Canada wrestles with the mounting tolls of historic deaths at residential schools, many are reconsidering how to celebrate Canada Day on July 1, 2021. There are calls for an independent probe, and even for criminal charges to be laid.

The upside is that this might be Canada’s moment of reconciliation, with unprecedented interest in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Accepting the realities of this past may be the first steps to creating a better future.

How the legal system deals with these issues is equally challenging, as illustrated by the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision earlier . . . [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.

COMPAGNIES : Dans le contexte d’un long conflit familial, les attentes raisonnables de l’appelante quant au rachat de ses actions ont été frustrées; que cette situation résulte ou non d’une stratégie concertée des intimés ne change rien au fait qu’il s’agit d’une forme d’oppression qui doit être corrigée.

Intitulé :  . . . [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:

• Legal Assistant, Resource Team (Corporate & Litigation) (Contract role) | Edmonton, AB
  (Bennett Jones)
• Director, Legal (Full-time) | Toronto, ON
  (Insurance Bureau of Canada)
• Law Librarian (Full-time) | Calgary, AB
  (Bennett Jones)
• Director of Market Policy and Industry Relations (8+

If you are subscribed to Slaw posts by email, there is an important upcoming change that you’ll want to know about.

As of the end of June, Feedburner (our current provider of email alerts) is discontinuing its email services. As such, we’ve transferred our email subscriptions over to Mailchimp, with service beginning tomorrow morning.

What’s changing?

• At least for initially, we will only have one email subscription that includes all Slaw posts.
• Emails containing the previous day’s posts will land in your inbox from Monday to Friday. (The Monday email includes posts from Saturday and Sunday.)
• Category, comment and custom

Periodically on Thursdays, we present a significant excerpt, usually from a recently published book or journal article. In every case the proper permissions have been obtained. If you are a publisher who would like to participate in this feature, please let us know via the site’s contact form.

Litigating Artificial Intelligence

Authors: Jill Presser, Jesse Beatson, Gerald Chan
ISBN: 978-1-77255-764-0
Publisher: Emond Publishing
Page Count: 368
Publication Date: May 2021
Regular Price: $149 (softcover)

Excerpt: Chapter 17: Coda–Litigating in An Era of Thinking Software [Footnotes omitted]

Artificial intelligence (AI) has migrated from our imaginations into government departments, courtrooms, consumer products, . . . [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.

Abortion and the Law in America: Roe v Wade to the Present. By Mary Ziegler. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020. xvii, 312 p. Includes timeline, notes, bibliographic references, and index. ISBN 9781108735599 (softcover) $33.95.

Reviewed by Margo Jeske
Emerita Law Librarian (Retired)
University of Ottawa
In CLLR 46:2

On . . . [more]

Earlier this month, the Canadian Judicial Council published updated ethics guidance for federally appointed judges. The new Ethical Principles for Judges substantially revises a 1998 document of the same name. Among the revisions is a caution that judges must be technologically competent. The section addressing judicial diligence and competence includes the following statement:

3.C.5 Judges should develop and maintain proficiency with technology relevant to the nature and performance of their judicial duties.

This provision on technological competence is a welcome addition to the Principles. Two years ago, I argued in a Slaw column that there should be a formally . . . [more]

The ever-growing use of non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) prevents those who sign from being able to “disclose” their experiences of reprehensible workplace discrimination. NDAs routinely silence the victims of sexual harassment, racism, bullying, and discrimination (among many other examples: for being pregnant, or requiring mental health leave, etc.).

Of questionable legality, NDAs are routinely demanded by defence lawyers in settlement negotiations. A gag on the victim is an obvious, albeit immoral, “ask” for legal representatives of alleged or actual perpetrators. They don’t want their reputation as a racist or a sexual harasser or a bully following them around, do they?

If . . . [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. Hawkes v. Max Aicher (North America) Limited, 2021 ONSC 4290 (CanLII)

[17] In this case, we are concerned exclusively with statutory construction. Matters of statutory interpretation, like other questions of law, are evaluated on a reasonableness standard. As a reviewing court, in accordance with the guidance of Vavilov on the application of the reasonableness standard, we do not undertake a de novo . . . [more]

INTRODUCTION

Time was the community or advocacy activity of lawyers with judicial aspirations centred around fundraising and other activities related to participation in our major political parties. Eventually, some of these lawyers found themselves rewarded with a judicial appointment. They cut their ties, as far as anyone knew, with their favoured party. It was not difficult to end their pre-judicial activity and remove themselves from community involvement. More recently, however, with the net for potential judges cast far wider in order to increase diversity on the bench, the community work aspirants engage in may be quite different. And so we . . . [more]

Let me tell you about someone I met a couple of years ago. Her name was Judge Deborah A. Batts. In 1994, the Honorable Judge Batts became the first openly gay person to be appointed as an Article III federal judge in the United States. She held this position for over 25 years in the Southern District of New York. As part of the library team in my previous position, we commemorated her 25 years of service with a candid interview during the 2019 Pride month with her fellow openly gay judges also at the U.S. Courts for the Second . . . [more]